I just received my 16x9 HDTV today and I put in Kill Bill Vol 2.

I have done a lot of reading and was told there were really two options for aspect ratios of 2.35:1 like Kill Bill or Gladiator. Use the Full mode and have black bars or use Theater Wide 2 and zoom a bit, losing some resolution, but filling the screen.

I have tried it in both modes. I thought there was a small amount of resolution difference and it seemed like there was some of the picture missing because of the zooming it does in TW2, but not a lot.

What shocked me where how big the black bars were in Full. They were not just a small part of the screen. They cut off (I mean the screen, not the movie picture) a lot on the top and the bottom. Considering that 1.85:1 fits perfectly in the Full mode, I couldn't believe how different it was for a movie like Kill Bill. I can't say that I like that black bar look on the widescreen tv, but I don't want to lose picture either.

I just can't believe the black bars aren't much higher and that the picture is much bigger.

Can anyone here please let me know what they do or what they think about this?

Thanks.

yeah 2.35 ratio will do that...if you have a widescreen tv, you moist likely want to watch movies in their OAR, zooming in doesnt do that, it chops off some of the pic like you said

Also, make sure your DVD player is set to output 16x9. For the first few months, I never thought to change that setting and i was watching most DVDs on my new set being ouput for a 4:3 tv.

Deftones,

Are you in the Phoenix area or the Tucson area?

I thought if you were in Tucson, you might know someone who does professional calibration. Let me know if you do.

Thanks.

The DVD settings for tv output are the first thing I thought of too. Usually its just going into your DVD player's setting menu. If the DVD is WS anamorphic you shouldn't have to do any zooming -- if the player's output is set properly you should pop it in and it should play in the best way. A 1.85:1 picture should fill your screen with no (or very small) black bars. A 2.35:1 picture will still have black bars, but they'd be smaller than if you watched the movie on a 4:3 TV.

My "layman's" guess would be that the black bars of a 2.35:1 movie on a widescreen TV takes up about 20% of the total screen - 10% on the top and 10% on the bottom. If it's taking up any more than that, you've probably got the 16x9 output selected wrong on your player.

I'm in the Phoenix area. I can shoot you an email for a guy very highly respected in AZ and would probably make the trip down there. Shoot me an email under my profile, and I'll dig it up for you.

Black bars don't "do" anything. That's because the bars aren't part of the movie, they are simply the part of the screen that the image doesn't cover.

The numbers 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 are ratios - the ratio of the height to width. A 2.35:1 image is 2.35 times wider than it is high. 1.85:1 is taller and narrower, while 2.35:1 is shorter and wider. The reason they display differently is that you're trying to show two completely different "shaped" images onto a TV with only one "shape". When you try to fit the wider 2.85:1 image onto a 1.85:1 screen, to match the edges results in 'left over' space at the top and bottom.

This page has a good explanation and shows some various ratios, which really helps visualize the difference. There are also some links to screen shots from movies.

http://home1.gte.net/res0mrb7/widescreen/aspect.html

Here's another site with some great information:

http://www.widescreen.org

As an aside, this is why I ended up sticking with a 4:3 for my projector. Still great for tv and computer use, and at some point you are going to have black bars on nearly any tv. At least with all lights off, I can't tell there are any bars with my projector.