[Viduser]

I have a 36XBR450 with a Panasonic RP56 DVD player with Component Video (progressive) hookups. From the small detail in the Sony users manual - you can get the automatic Anamorphic detection working if you set the DVD player to 16:9. I also set the Enhancement to Auto in the Sony setup.


When I play anamorphic DVD's, the Sony does not seem to be properly squeezing the display. I have to go into the Sony setup and manually turn on the enhanced mode. Does anyone have an idea of what is going on???


Thanks.

 

[Matt_Stevens]

With most of these sets, only th S-Video cable passes the toggle through. I had one these and it was annoying, but no big deal after a while.

 

[Viduser]

Is it the Sony that only uses the S-video connector or the Panasonic? The Sony manual has no detail on the type of connector to use to make this feature work.

 

[htnewbee]

If you do a search on this, I think someone posted a similar problem. It seems that the toggle does not get passed through the component cables; it works only for the S-video.

 

[ZManCartFan]

Quote:

Originally posted by Viduser Is it the Sony that only uses the S-video connector or the Panasonic? The Sony manual has no detail on the type of connector to use to make this feature work.

The Sony does pass the auto 16:9 flag through component. But it only works with an interlaced signal. Progressive mode (which can only come through component) does not pass the flag.

 

[maxdb]

Not to be too anal, but there's a movement going on to stamp out the inappropriate use of "anamorphic" when referring to displays and DVDs. There are no "anamorphic" DVDs. DVDs come in 2 types only... 4:3 and widescreeen. Widescreen DVDs are recorded in one of the widescreen formats on the DVD. They only look wrong when played back on 4:3 displays because the wide screen information is squeezed up by the 4:3 monitor... the images on the DVD are NOT squeezed in any way.


And your monitor doeesn't have an "anamorphic" mode, it has a vertical compression mode that allows you to view widescreen DVDs as 16:9 widescreen images on the monitor. If you don't use vertical compression, it's your monitor that stretches the image... not anything on the DVD itself. Unfortunately, DVD boxes sometimes have the "anamorphic" term on them even though it is incorrect. Others say "enhanced for widescreen viewing" or something like that... which is also misleading... all it means is that the image on the disc is widescreen, period.


So "anamorphic" is really only appropriate when referring to certain aspects of photographing or projecting movies from film - not in any other context for home theater.

 

[Matt_Stevens]

I've seen this post in other threads. No offense, but it's kind of anal. The use of the term anamorphic is here to stay.

 

[Viduser]

It appears that you need to use an interlaced signal (as the above post describes) for the vertical compression to work automatically. I have tested this out and once I use interlaced everything works fine. Thanks all for the advice!

 

[BenjaminWoo]

Hi Maxdb,


Maybe you're right about the terminology being wrong, but from reading your post it seems that you think widescreen is widescreen. That is not true. There is letterbox versus "anamorphic." Letterbox in the 2.35:1 ratio has 270 lines of vertical resolution versus 360 lines for "anamorphic" 2.35:1. If you want to read up on this, do a search unther the DVD software forum for my posts.


Ben

 

[maxdb]

I'm not confused about letterboxed DVDs, but NOBODY talks about those as being "anamorphic" so I didn't include them in the description of what was encoded on DVD. Letterbox DVDs are encoded as 4:3 images, not any "special" format. They just happen to be 4:3 images with the top and bottom of the image being all black. There is no specific resolution for letterbox DVDs, because the number of vertical lines making up the image is different depending on the aspect ratio of the movie.


Widescreen DVDs are not 4:3 images and need either a 16:9 display or 4:3 display with vertical compression mode to look right when they are played.


Besides that, letterbox DVDs are getting increasingly rare as new transfers are being made.


"Anamorphic is here to say" - OK fine, everybody who knows the real score will know you don't when you keep using anamorphic. Just trying to help clarify a widely propagated inaccuracy - do what you like with the information. This won't be the last you hear about 'death to anamorphic' - people are pretty receptive to not using it when they understand how it fell into popular, but incorrect, use.

 

[shadowpuppet]

Looks Anamorphic to me


Main Entry: ana·mor·phic

Pronunciation: "a-n&-'mor-fik

Function: adjective

Etymology: New Latin anamorphosis distorted optical image

Date: circa 1925

: producing, relating to, or marked by intentional distortion (as by unequal magnification along perpendicular axes) of an image

 

[Brando2]

Can somebody tell me if I have this correct? I have a sony 32" xbr and am about to get a front projector (pan. 711xu). Both have 4:3 and 16:9 mode. The panasonic 711 also has a 4:3S mode that displays the 4:3 image in the center of the 16:9 frame. For the best picture I should do the following:


If the DVD says anamorphic or enhanced for widescreen, set the DVD player to 16:9 and the display device to 16:9.


If the DVD does not contain either of these decsriptions (making it letterboxed?) set the DVD player to 4:3 and display device to 4:3.


Thanks