Dear All,

I have a Sony WEGA KV-36XBR250 [June 1999, no Progressive Scan feature] and for all the DVDs that I have watched for the past 2 years, I have seen them in “Wide-Screen” / “Letter-Box” format (black bars on top and bottom) and thought that was the best I could get.

Well today I rent the newly released movie: “Enemy at the Gates” and at the back of the box it says enhanced for 16:9 TVs.

When I inserted the DVD, I notice that the picture is even more squeezed and the clarity is amazing.

Now I am not talking about Progressive Scan, since I can see the interlacing (very minimal though) since neither my JVC DVD Player, nor the TV have this feature, but now that I have seen this even sharper display played back by my DVD and displayed by my TV, this question popped up in my mind:

What was the format of the previous DVDs that I was watching then?

What is the difference between 16:9 and Wide-Screen/Letter-Box format?

I mean I have LOT of DVDs ranging from old Austin Powers, Anime, Dinosaur, Bugs Life, and the rest but this is the first time a DVD utilized this feature of my TV.

Even this article did not help me:

http://www.dvdforum.com/faq-tech.htm

Thanks in advance.

Enhanced for 16:9 TV's means that the DVD is anamorphic. You were probably enjoying the anamorphic squeeze. It allows the full 480 scan lines to be used for the image, rather then having many of them wasted on the letterbox bars. Check out this link:

http://www.keohi.com/keohihdtv/usefu...icsqueeze.html


16:9 is a TV with a 1.78:1 ascept ratio. Widescreen DVD's tend to have ascept ratios of 1.85:1 or 2.35:1. Letterboxes are the black bars that appear on the top and bottom of the screen to fit an image of a different ascept ratio onto your TV. Windowboxes occur when the black bars occur on the left and right sides of the screen.