Gomez

So why do the manufacturers call the sets 16:9 instead of the more accurate 1.78:1? I suppose they're wrong, everyone's wrong instead of you.

Why are DVDs that expand a squished 4:3 image to the intended OAR viewing aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 called "anamorphic" by the industry? Again, you could possibly be the only one who's right here and the rest of the pundits, engineers and studios are wrong. I've seen stranger.

When did I ever say that anamorphic was constrained to one particular aspect ratio?

Have you unearthed a definition of anamorphic debunking the one I posted?

How did you decide that I thing anamorphic DVDs change the aspect ratio of the delivered film? They are displayed in OAR, although they are sitting "inside" the DVD at 4:3 much the same as an anamorphic celluloid film is recorded in a 4:3 frame to later be unsquished by the anamorphic lens.

A clarification is that 1.85:1 movies do in fact fill the whole screen of a 16:9 TV (1.78:1 if ya wanna be a stickler and describe widescreen TV in a method not used by anyone alse) instead of putting up mattes like you said ("black bars"). Unless, of course, you go into the menus and totally eliminate the slight overscan designed into these sets.

I appreciate the fact that you contribute to this forum and have a difference of opinion. However, you have yet to make a case for your opinion that enhanced DVDs should not accurately be called anamorphic. Until you do, your espousement of the term as applied to DVD is simply an opinion and I have heretofore given the only cogent argument here.

If anything, the anamorphic projectors / cameras might be termed 'optically' anamorphic, while the similar DVD process could be 'digita'l anamorphic encoding. Then we could all be happy, in a galaxy far far away. Basically, both processes are ~16:9 to 4:3 back to ~16:9, with one being performed in the digital encoding domain and the other using optics.

Anyhow, I was simply debating and I'm always happy to concede when wrong. I did not appreciate your verbal and implicit attacks on myself but you're your own man so there it is.

DVD_O_Rama

Okay, I said I was done, but I can't help myself. You've made it appear as if I was 'attcking' you by disagreeing with your termonolgy. You weren't attacked, you were disagreed with. That being said, let's go over some things:

So why do the manufacturers call the sets 16:9 instead of the more accurate 1.78:1? I suppose they're wrong, everyone's wrong instead of you.

More accurate? 16:9=1.78:1. That's simple math. I never claimed one term was better then the other, and seeing has how they mean exactly the same thing, they are interchangable.

Why are DVDs that expand a squished 4:3 image to the intended OAR viewing aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 called "anamorphic" by the industry?

Not everyone in the industry does. As I said earlier, not every studio uses the term anamorphic to describe a disc that is enhanced for widescreen televisions. Off the top of my head, Paramount, New Line, Warner Bros., Artisian, Anchor Bay, and MGM use terms other then 'anamorphic' on their packaging.

When did I ever say that anamorphic was constrained to one particular aspect ratio?

I didn't say you did, but you did say: "16:9 is a generic catch-all for aspect ratios ranging from 1.78 to 2.35 wide.", which is still incorrect.


A clarification is that 1.85:1 movies do in fact fill the whole screen of a 16:9 TV.

Again, I don't know if it's your lack of real-world experience (you said yourself you've only had your gear 2 months) with different hardware or what, but if you want to argue the fact that a DVD with a 1.85:1 AR fills the screen of a widescreen set...wow. You can argue or debate semantics all you want, but I would think that someone that has taken it upon themselves to educate so many (ad nauseam) would have a firm grasp on a simple, simple matter such as AR and how it relates to widescreen displays.

I appreciate the fact that you contribute to this forum and have a difference of opinion. However, you have yet to make a case for your opinion that enhanced DVDs should not accurately be called anamorphic. Until you do, your espousement of the term as applied to DVD is simply an opinion and
I have heretofore given the only cogent argument here.

I'm glad you appreciate my contributions to this forum, as I enjoy discussing this hobby that I love very much, and have been doing so here since 1999.
My 'case' was made in my first post. I appreciate the long words, but my 'espousement' of the term is as sound as a pound. The term anamorphic has been used to describe a type of widescreen lens as far back as the 1950's, for shooting in the 2.35:1 AR. DVDs didn't start using the term until sometime after 1997, at the earliest. You can consider your argument cognent all you want, the term anamorphic pre-dates DVD by 40+ years. Argument settled.

Anyhow, I was simply debating and I'm always happy to concede when wrong. I did not appreciate your verbal and implicit attacks on myself but you're your own man so there it is.

There were no attacks made in this thread, btw.
This has gone waaay off-topic and is pointless. I only responsed one last time to clarify some things. If you (or anyone) want to discuss this matter, feel free to email me, and not do it here in the forum.
email

Gomez

The FAQ used by the rest of the world echoes my explainations 100%. See section 2.5 for a discussion of widescreen and "anamorphisis" as applied to DVD: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/rec-video/dvd-faq/

Maybe you'd enjoy telling the folks who compiled this that they are wrong, too. They refer to all widescreen aspects simply as 16:9, enhanced is called anamorphic and other hair-splitting issues we have debated are covered here as well.

As for 1.85:1 filling the screen of a 1.78:1 TV without mattes ("black bars"), it is due to overscan. Any certified technician of the Imaging Sciences Foundation will tell you that, or you can pop an AVIA DVD in and see for yourself.

When I called a 16:9 set 1.85:1 instead of the correct ratio, well, I must have had a brain phart. We both know better, my apologies for the error.

LtlPhysics

Some of you folks have been all over and under the "anamorphic buzz" before and can remember the confusion that six-pack felt when he/she had a choice of a Disney "Widescreen" title or a "16x9 Enhanced" title from, say, Columbia. All titles being equal, most of them bought the tape, which could also be labeled widescreen if it had the "bars."

Tape they understood, anamorphic and 16x9 or 1.78:1 enhanced, they didn't get. My folks will never get it, not a chance, and it doesn't bother them just as my sisters are satisfied with stereo, and tinny stereo at that. The HiFi outputs of their vcrs are all connected to air when a couple of cables could correct it.

I didn't know the definitions of anamorphic until I made my first dvd purchase, the Alien 4-pack, and immediately became concerned about how the studios were going to release their widescreen titles. I have a number of laserdiscs so I knew, for the most part, what was going on and the term "anamorphic," however accurate and correct, was a big, confusing word to a nation of lazy thinkers, at least lazy regarding media presentations.

Today, almost three years later, you guys are tit for tatting back and forth about something you would agree on, were you to share the same room. Meanwhile, the joes that I know are happy with vhs, my folks have never used the record function of their vcrs, not once, and PBS continues to raise revenues by offering VHS recordings of the program they just aired.

Mr. Salty

No, the folks who compiled that FAQ aren't wrong, you simply read it incorrectly. The FAQ doesn't refer to all widescreen aspect ratios as 16:9, they simply refer any DVD mastered for display on a widesceen TV as 16:9.

16:9 is itself an aspect ratio. It happens to be an aspect ratio that has nothing to do with film. It's the AR chosen for widecreen TVs and nothing more. When the DVD FAQ makes reference to 16:9, it does not refer to the movies presented on DVD or their specific aspect ratios at all.

Gomez, with all due respect, you're on the right track, but your posts are filled with errors. Some are minor, others are more significant. You may see it as hair-splitting, but DVD_O_Rama has been correct on virtually everything he has written here.

One error I'd like to point out is your insistence that the word "anamorphic" came from the Panavision process. It most certainly did not. The anamorphic process, including the terminology, as we currently know it was invented in the 1920s by Henri Chrétien. The process didn't take off until Twentieth Century Fox began using it under the trade name CinemaScope in 1953. This, by the way, is why the generic term for the wider 2.35:1 ratio is scope. As the process took off, other studios adopted CinemaScope, and competing equipment manufacturers began developing their own anamorphic processes. It was only at this point that Panavision got into the game.

So, while Panavision may be a generic term in your mind, it most certainly isn't. Scope is the generic term.

I'm not going to go back and correct every error made in this thread, because frankly it would take forever and I'd likely contribute errors of my own. What all this boils down to is that the word "anamorphic" is confusing when applied to DVD because it does tend to mean different things, depending on whether one is talking about the DVD or the film contained on it.

With film, anamorphic refers to a specific process, the end result being a picture that has one of the wider aspect ratios (these days it's almost always 2.35 or 2.4:1). With DVD, it simply means any movie that has an aspect ratio wider than a standard TV's 1.33:1 that has been enhanced for display on a widescreen TV. The movie itself could have any one of several aspect ratios, including 1.66:1, 1.85:1, 2:1, 2.2:1, 2.35:1, 2.4:1, 2.55:1 or 2.76:1.

stevevt

This seems like a logical place to close this thread.

Questions? Comments? Feel free to email me.

-stevevt