I own a wide screen TV, I also have Direct TV TIVO system. I can toggle through my TV Aspect Ratio Menu between Letter Box, 16:9, Zoom, and Panaromic. I have it typicaly set at 16:9. I can also selcet on my Tivo box different aspect ratios- 16:9 or 4:3- I have it set also at 16:9. Likewise my Samsung DVD player is also set for wide screen and when I rent movies I pick the wide screen version when available.
Why then do i still get a lot of broadcast TV with the top and bottoms blocked off? Why also do I occasionally get DVDs with the same blocking. It bugs the living heck out of to look at it and think about the fact that I just bought a nice TV in wide screen only to get 25% of the screen blocked off and a screwed up aspect ratio of something much wider than 16:9. For the broacast protion is it just that the shows are sent out that way because often commercials will air in the middle of these blocked shows that use the full screen.
Any help on this?
A little history first:
Movie theaters weren’t always “widescreen”. As television was entering more and more homes in the late 40’s theater owners and Hollywood studios introduced new wider formats like “CinemaScope” and the like to attrct audiences. The most common of these was the “Scope” ration of 2.35 or 2.40 to 1. Meanwhile the adoption of NTSC as our television system placed the aspect ratio of TVs at 1.33 to 1 (sometimes referred to as 4:3). In the 90s when High Definition (ATSC) was being developed SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) and others were putting together the system they decided on 1.78 to 1 (commonly called 16:9) as the aspect of choice as it was the least offensive compromise between TV (1.33 to 1) and Movies (2.35 to 1).
Now most HD broadcasts you see were shot in HD specifically for HD television broadcast. Films, however are generally considered art by their directors and DPs and are still commonly filmed in 2.35 or 2.4 to 1 and the black bars are needed to preserve the original content.
Sorry to be a little long winded…
Steve
First and foremost, you have a wide screen, why are you using a Direct TV TIVO sytem? You should be using a Direct TV HD Tivo system. Is you wide screen HD compatible? Are you using the component video inputs?
DVD is another story. Most movies are not in 16:9 format so that is why some movies are in letterbox.
Your setup is the equivalent of riding with your seat too high, wearing gloves, sun shield on your helmet and bike jersey instead of a tri jersey.
Stephen M is right. Some movies you buy as ‘widescreen’ or movies shown on HD channels are formatted for hte 16:9 ratio. But many ‘widescreen’ movies and or widescreen broadcasts are the panoramic view where you still get a box on the top and bottom of your screen. You are seeing the movie in the original wide format that it was intended.
What I really hate are the channels that bill themselves as HD and broadcast in HD but they are still using the 4:3 ratio and ‘stretching’ the sides of the show to fit a 16:9 screen. For instance, if you keep set your TV to ‘stretch’ a 4:3 non HD show the sides will be slightly distorted. If you watch Law & Order on TNT in HD the show is broadcast in the 16:9 format to fill up your screen but the sides are already ‘stretched’.
We used to have a Hitachi widescreen projection TV. It was nice, but it was too big & the wife made me get rid of it because it only fit in one spot in the living room. But with that TV you had to switch between different aspect ratios (4:3, 16:9, zoom, stretch etc…) as you changed channels. So if you were watching a non HD channel in the 16:9 ratio it was stretched out and every one looked fatter. Or if you had it set to 4:3 and put it on a HD channel you didnt’ get the widescreen view.
The new TV we got was an LG and I love it. On the aspect ratio you can set it to “Determined by Program”, so if you are watching a non HD channel it shows it on the tv in the 4:3 format with black sides. If you change to an HD channel you get it in the full widescreen without changing the aspect. Really a nice feature.
Although what happened to the good old days where you got 13 channels, had to get up to twist the dial and change channels or volume and if you were lucky enough to get HBO had the little box on top of the TV that you had to flip the switch on to watch HBO.
. On the aspect ratio you can set it to “Determined by Program”, so if you are watching a non HD channel it shows it on the tv in the 4:3 format with black sides. If you change to an HD channel you get it in the full widescreen without changing the aspect. Really a nice feature.
I know of no way for this to be correct. The aspect ratio is set by the broadcasting station and not the TV. It is not by “Determined by Program” but “Determined by Channel”. All new TVs have this feature. The channel you were referring to was TNT and I know of no other channel that does what they do which is to stretch the picture at the edges. The channels that you watch which are in HD and then have black bars on the side for a 4:3 picture are transmitted by the station like that. Some stations will zoom the picture a little and fill the sides up a little. With other channels that are in STD, you have the option on your TV to view those stations with sidebars or to stretch the picture.
I think you misunderstood me. My old TV, the hitachi, if you had it set to 16:9 and watched a normal, non HD channel that was broadcast in 4:3 it the picture filled the whole screen, but the entire picture was stretched. This way everyone looked shorter and fatter. If you were still in the 16:9 mode and flipped to a true HD channel you got the real HD picture filling the whole screen, no distorted.
If you had it set to 4:3 then the non HD channels looked like they do on a non-widescreen tv, but there were black bars on the sides. If you then went to an HD channel you still had the bars on the sides and the picture was also framed on the top and bottom too.
So if you wanted to switch back and forth between a non hd channel and an hd channel you had to keep changing the picture ratio.
The LG I got last year has all the options for aspect (4:3, 16:9, stretch, zoom etc…) but it also has an option that says set by program. Our cable provider has both an HD and non HD for CBS. So if I want to watch a show that is broadcast in HD (such as CSI or Two and a Half Men) I can watch it on the normal channel and the picture will show up in the 4:3 aspect with black on both sides but if I flip to the HD channel it will be in the full 16:9 size in HD and not distorted. I don’t have to touch the aspect on the TV itself, whereas my old tv (and my mother’s zenith) I would have had to change the aspect each time. Now for commercials, newscasts and other things that are on HD channels but not broadcast in HD you get the black on each side even if you are on an HD channel.
I know that for instance about half the Steeler’s games I watch on the Pittsburgh HD channel are not in HD and you therefore get it in the 4:3 ratio. If I wanted to override the ‘set by program’ aspect and pick 16:9 I could do that, but again it distorts the image.
Without doing anything, my new Vizio exhibits the same behavior as your LG: switching between STD and HD versions of the same channel appears to display each appropriately. That seems to be the default behavior, as I don’t recall setting anything like your “set by program” option.
Unrelated question that I’m too lazy to scan avsforum for: does one have to set things like contrast and brightness for each of the various inputs (RGB, HDMI, etc.), or once for all of them? Or does it vary by model?
Mine is a Vizio as well, and it has the options I listed in the menu.
Ken,
That’s usually a feature of your cable/fios/sat box. Some of the better televisions out there will “remember” it’s settings based on input and scan rate (resolution) but there really isn’t a way for a set to set itself unless one of those two things change.
Steve
Ken,
I don’t know if it varies by brand or not, but on my Samsung HD TV I can set individual brightness and contrast settings for each input. It works great for us because we use a slightly darker set of settings on HDMI 2, for DVD’s, as we do for satelite content on HDMI 1. But if I recall untill we made the setting changes on HDMI 2 whatever we had set up on HDMI 1 acted as the default settings for all of the inputs.