Anamorphic display from digital channels via SA 8300HD?

[Numes]

Edit: chipmac and RichC have pointed out my misunderstanding of anamorphic and 16:9 native.

Basically, I'm asking whether or not I should be getting anamorphic displays from TV shows that I know are anamorphic. Some examples include: Stargate SG-1, Battlestar Galactica, etc... Currently I am just seeing them as non-anamorphic.

Is it just the fact that my cable company doesn't receive these shows with the extra data or what? I had asked the installer when he installed the SA 8300HD if I could watch anamorphic shows in 16x9 and he said that I could. He may have thought I was talking about the HD channels, I'm not sure.

For reference, my cable provider is McLeod in Cedar Rapids, IA.

[chipmac]

HD broadcasts are 16:9 in their proper 16:9 aspect ratio but aren't sent out anamorphic. SD broadcasts also are not anamorphic but can be any number of ARs including letterboxed but are all 4:3. The shows you listed are just letterboxed 4:3 shows in SD and if you're able to get those channels in HD would not be letterboxed and would fill the screen of a 16:9 HD display.

DVDs can store their video anamorphicly since everything is stored on disc in 4:3 AR. So if the disc is anamorphic the image will be stored horizontally compressed and then stretched out to fill the width when it hits a 16:9 display and will look normal. If the DVD is non anamorphic regardless if it's letterboxed or not then the image will be distorted when it hits a 16:9 display unless you use one of the TVs format options to put it in it's proper AR.

[rdclark]

There is no such thing as an anamorphic broadcast/cablecast. There is no need for an HD signal to be anamorphically squeezed, because the only equipment that can receive it is already 16:9 native.

You may be confusing the idea of "anamorphically enhanced" with the idea of "16:9 native," and perhaps you are asking why these shows aren't filling your widescreen TV.

The answer is, of course, that in order to receive them in their full 16:9 screen-filling glory you have to be receiving them on a digital HD channel.

On an analog channel, these shows are simply letterboxed: you receive a 4:3 NTSC signal in which the black bars are part of the frame.

As chipmac points out, DVD is the only current consumer medium that uses anamorphic compression to store widescreen images in a standard-ratio frame, and the only reason it's necessary is because DVDs are NTSC (analog 4:3) video.

RichC

[Numes]

Thanks for both the replies. I was definitely getting my anamorphically enhanced confused with 16:9 native. I've been mainly a DVD guru for a while and just recently got my HD box and I've been trying to learn the ins and outs of TV broadcasting.

So there is no such thing as 16:9 native for SD broadcasts? It seems like for digital channels, HD or SD, they should be able to have that information. Is it because the digital channels are not truly digital and are received by the cable company analog and converted to digital? Is there such thing a true digital SD channel?

[rdclark]

NTSC is 4:3. Period. You'll never see anamorphically squeezed content broadcast in NTSC because it would display as a squeezed image, anybody tuning into it would think their TV was broken, and there's no consumer tuner or TV or cable box that can unsqueeze an anamorphic frame and send it to a widescreen display, the way a DVD player can.

Don't confuse SD digital with NTSC analog. Your cable company may well be providing some digital channels in SD, which can have either a 4:3 or a 16:9 ratio. SD is 480i.

In practice, though, for network content it's a choice of two signals: the analog broadcast signal (4:3 NTSC, which may be letterboxed or not, and which may come to you on digital cable as a 480i SD digital transmission) and the HD simulcast (16:9 HD at 720p or 1080i). These will be provided on two different cable channels.

RichC

[chipmac]

Yes don't confuse aspect ratio with whether or not the signal is digital or not. Any true HD programming is 16:9. Now what that AR is within the 16:9 frame is open to the programming. You can have a TV show like Leno broadcast in the 1.78:1 AR which is equivalent to 16:9. Then you can have movie with an AR of 2.35:1 that is letterboxed to fit inside a 16:9 frame with black bars added to the top and bottom to fill in the dead space. Then you can also have up converted SD content broadcast as HD where the program is 4:3 and pillarboxed with bars on the sides. In all of these cases the frame is 16:9 but sometimes depending on the program there will be bars on either the top and bottom or the left and right sides.

This is all the same as SD programming has been for years where the frame is 4:3 and bars are added or not to fill in the unused space on letterboxed shows. So whether or not the signal is digital has no bearing on the AR of the programming except that all HD is 16:9 and all SD is 4:3 and both can have bars added to fill in dead space on programming that is wider than either format.