Hi gang,

I was watching "Romancing The Stone" on my new front projection system last night, and while the DVD case stated an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, this thing has got to be even wider. I have a 16x9 ratio screen, and 2.35 : 1 movies generally have pretty small black bars. They're huge for this film. I have Ben-Hur (which is a staggering 2.76:1), and Romancing The Stone appears to be the same size.

Am I imagining this?

Thanks

Romancing the stone isn't anamorphic, so that probably accounts for it.

It is not 16x9 enhanced... that is prob why.

Edit: Yeah, what he said

Wasnt there supposed to be a SE rumored sometime? I really want a 16x9 version!

Same here. I've been holding off buying this and Jewel of the Nile until they do anamorphic transfers.

-AC

How could a person not notice when a picture is stretched? It boggles the mind.

It boggles my mind too. My roommate borrowed Run Lola Run to watch it with some friends, when I came out to the living room I noticed right off that it was way too thin. It is funny too because there is one scene in a bank where teh camera moves alot...as if it was handheld, and having the video stretched made it the camera movement seem even worse! They still watched the rest of the movie stretched...even tho I told them it was easy to fix.

Okay JLyon, I'm asking for help. I knew something was amiss since the stated ratio was 2.35:1 yet that clearly wasn't how it appeared. I tried setting my DVD player back to a ratio of 4:3 LBX but that didn't change anything. I'm using a front projector whose native ratio is 16:9; none of the different views gave me the picture I hoped for. What am I missing?

You're never going to get "the picture you'd hoped for" since the disk isn't enhanced for widescreen TVs. What you got is probably the best you're going to get with that disc. You can probably set your dvd player or projector to stretch it even more to get rid of the black bars, but that will make picture quality even worse. There's a reason that I only buy anamorphic DVDs.

You don't want to change any settings in your DVD player. Your DVD player should be set for 16:9 at all times and left there. You need to change the aspect ratio setting in the display to Zoom (or whatever your particular projector calls it), which will magnify the center of a non-anamorphic picture.

Zoom is the usual mode for non-anamorphic dvds (it does cut a little off the sides, but this is better than not zooming). Best you can do with non-anamorphic dvds (not many left these days).

Pretty much every 16x9 TV has a mode for non-anamorphic widescreen that performs a simple zoom. On my Toshiba, the setting is Theaterwide 2. It works not only for non-anamorphic DVDs, but also widescreen TV shows, such as The West Wing.

There are also some DVD players that will perform this zoom for you, but I couldn't tell you which models/manufactureres.

Thanks for all of the help everyone. I'll try the zoom mode and see how it looks as I have other non-anomorphics to watch as well. Since I just got my new front projection setup, I only noticed how stretched the picture really was. I didn't try "zoom" as I didn't really want to chop anything off the sides, but maybe it's not too bad. Again, thanks!

Actually, zoom won't chop any picture information off the sides. A non-anamorphic DVD is really a 4x3 picture with black bars on the top and bottom. When you view 4x3 material on a 16x9 set, you get black or gray bars on the sides. If you were to watch a non-anamorphic widescreen DVD in 4x3 mode, you'd see black bars on the top and bottom, and black or gray bars on the sides. When you use ZOOM, the black/gray bars on the sides are cut off, as well as some or all of the black bars on the top and bottom.

I don't know much about front projection systems, but I assume they don't project the bars on the sides when watching 4x3 material. They should, however, work properly when zooming non-anamorphic material.