Ummm... can someone PLEASE answer my question as well? As for "A Fish Called Wanda", if you have the DVD, the best way to check it is the procedure described in my previous post.

"Zoom" can have a different meaning. My Panasonic DLP has a zoom mode which zooms the picture in so there is some cropping involved and you lose some information. But when people talk about the "zoom" function of a DVD player they mostly refer to zoom/pan and/or x,y scaling capability which can be used to "zoom" a letterbox (non-anamorphic) transfer to it's proper aspect ratio, albeit with some loss of resolution.

Anamorphic transfers are not a panacea. You can have some pretty good letterbox transfers and some pretty crappy anamorphic transfers. While I prefer anamorphic transfers, I go on a case by case basis so I don't necessarily subscribe to the "it has to be anamorphic!" rule.

There have been some really great non-anamorphic transfers like Criterion Collection Armeggedon, The Faculty, Strange Days. However when watching a movie on a 16x9 screen it is very annoying to see both letter box and pillar box together that gives that framing look. Then if the movie is filmed at 2.35:1 or more you lose even more of the screen.
I try to buy only anamorphic movies and have even ordered movies from other regions to take advantage of this. My True Lies and Scream are both from Spain and have excellent anamorphic transfers. Since I use a HTPC on a projector the PAL conversion and region locking is no problem.

The RP-91 has a scaling feature that will zoom a non-anamorphic disc to fill a 16:9 display. This is useful for those TVs that lock into 16:9 stretch mode on all progressive scan sources regardless of whether they are anamorphic or not.

The RP-82 does not have this feature.

It's actually native widescreen mode, which displays any inputs as 1.78:1. Send it a 1.78:1 image and no stretching is done. It was years before I figured out that subtle difference, but when I did it was a big step towards getting the most out my Pioneer display.

The RP-91 has scaling, but only in a one-size-fits-all form that crops the top and bottom of non-enhanced 1.66:1 images. On features with subtitles, the subtitles can be cropped off, which can ruin the viewing experience.

I had an RP-91 for a while, but I switched to a home theater PC, which has offers both full aspect ratio control and a superior image. More cumbersome to use, though.

Regards, RD

I buy only anamorphic DVDs. I have several non-anamorphic dvds that I will not replace unless the anarmorphic can be had for next to nothing. I would rather buy movies I dont have than replace movies I already own, particular when I may only watch that movie 1 or 2 times a year. While not ideal, I use one of the zoom function when watching a non-anamorphic dvd.

There was nothing worst than when I first bought my 16x9 tv (march 03) and put in a non-anamorphic dvd. Anybody with a regular tv(4x3 ratio), do yourself a huge favor and stop buying fool screen and non-anamorpic dvds! You will upgrade sometime in the future. Full screen is so worthless! Thankfully none of my dvds where full screen, but some of my early ones are non-anamorphic.

A quick way to know if anamorphoric is use your twin view. It's easy to tell. Btw, I try to watch most tv programs in HD. If on a analog channel, then I use the "normal" zoom function and keep the black bar on the sides of my widescreen tv. My sony sathd200 switches from 16x9 while on a hd channel to 4x3 when on analog automatically!

I agree aspikes, but the problem I keep running into is that the DVDs don't always say if they're anamorphic or not. Many retailers, particularly online retailers, don't always list that info.

Does anyone have some good places to find that kind of stuff out?

I was an early adopter of 16x9 (April 2000), and I once had problems with 4:3 and non-enhanced widescreen titles. However, use of an HTPC (which has full aspect ratio control) ameliorated the problem, to a large extent.

Note that buying 16x9-enhanced discs is no guarantee of flawless transfers, or that better versions won't come along. For example, I bought the Alien box set in 1999, and four years or so later, a "definitive" set was released with improved transfers (and more extras). And farther down the road, we can expect even better, when HD-DVD becomes popular.

Edit: DVD Planet tends to have those kinds of details, if they carry it.

RD

Thanks for the info!

What happens to Full-screen things on an HDTV? I have tv shows that are Full screen - and they wont' ever be widescreen because they weren't filmed that way. How would a widescreen tv display them - are they banded on the sides only, or all around? I'd hate if all my tv shows on dvd looked like crap on my next tv.

They're displayed with bars on the sides -- either gray bars or black bars, depending on your TV. They don't look like crap, they just have bars on the sides, no different than when you watch a widescreen movie on a standard television and there are bars on the top and bottom.

Or the HDTV can stretch the 4:3 image to fill the 16x9 screen. Some widescreen sets do a very good job at this.

And you can always run in "FULL" mode which doesn't stretch too bad. I guess it depends on your set. I watch all of my 4x3 SDTV in FULL mode on my 16x9 Panny. It does a nice job and the images don't look very stretched.

Thanks for the answers. I'm happy I won't have to rebuy tv eps on dvd again to see them.

I reccomend that if there is a TV show you reaalllyy want, to get it. It will be a long time before the studios do another major dump of their catalogs as is going on right now.

I have a widescreen TV, but I really don't care, anamorphic, non-anamorphic, all the same to me. I watch all of my DVD and TV shows in Full mode. I don't like fullscreen, but I will buy it if it's the only choice. I really don't mind top and bottom bars (kinda like them actually, seems more "cinematic") but hate side bars. That's why I use the full mode, it stretches the picture to the sides of the widescreen TV. Actually I watch all my anamorphic discs in full mode and keep the player set to letterbox. It seems that on 1:85:1 movies like Resident Evil, if the DVD player is set to 16x9, a little bit of the top and bottom of the screen is cut off, no matter what mode my TV is in (Sony uh, don't know the model). Is there a way to not miss ANY of the picture on these movies in 16x9 mode?

Here is an example, Resident Evil Deluxe Edition on my 16x9 TV when the DVD player is in 16x9 mode (close representation anyway) and the bottom is on the same TV in letterbox mode (though there are bigger black bars).


So why does this happen? Is there a way to see EVERYTHING in 1:85:1 in 16x9 mode on a 16x9 TV?

I'll give you an example of bad anamorphic: Almost anything from Warner Brothers.

I never noticed until the recent release of the SE of Purple Rain that WB uses matting, and considering some of the glaring cropping in Purple Rain, I now hate matting, since WB ruined one of my favorite movies from my teenage years.

What setting is your TV on? This looks like a mismatch between player and TV settings.

Non-anamorphic, widescreen DVDs only exist because studios were too shortsighted. There was never a good reason not to make them anamorphic. The notion that DVD players had poor downconversion which is why they had to make them that way further proves my point. Obviously, downcoversion improved very quickly (even on lower end players) and widescreen TVs became more prevalent.

Furthermore, it's extremely frustrating they haven't re-released many of the non-anamorphic DVDs yet, even with HD-DVD on the horizon.

A "good reason" in the case of some catalog titles was that their potential markets weren't worth the expense of remastering (or producing extras for). It was non-anamorphic, no-extras or not at all.

How much more does it cost to make a DVD anamorphic?

Nothing. In fact, I heard/read somewhere that it's actually easier/cheaper to do an anamorphic transfer than a non-anamorphic one. It all has to do with just telling the DVD manufacturer to do an anamorphic transfer. It's not quite that simple, but just about.

If I'm wrong, correct me, but I think that does not apply to old pre-DVD masters.

I know this wasn't meant for me, but I'll answer anyway. My widescreen tv does have a zoom mode. When I zoom in on non-anamorphic dvd's or my laserdiscs, I get a noticeable loss in picture quality. If the non-anamorphic source is 1.85:1 I usually just leave well enough alone and watch it unzoomed. It kills me to watch non-anamorphic 2:35:1 movies on my TV. In this case, I always just zoom in and live the the loss in picture quality. It usually isn't too bad with DVD's since the resolution is usually pretty good. Zooming in on a 2:35:1 laserdisc blows, so I try to avoid buying these unless I know the source is really good. I've found the the THX certified disc are very good and look pretty good even zoomed.

I too went through the process of discovering how bad my non- anamorphic dvd's looked when I recently purchased my widescreen tv. I decided to dump all the non anamorphic titles and wait for re-releases in the future, if they are to happen. I found zooming in on either zoom mode I had,(14x9, 16x9), was not acceptable for watching these dvd's. I also happily discovered what everyone who had traveled this route had said, and that was you would not go back to non-anamorphic, after seeing anamorphic on a widescreen set! However I do use the 14x9 zoom for my regular directv viewing and even though I lose a little picture info, Its not distracting .and I like the 'widescreen' feel of watching my broacasts this way. I do intend to switch to HD Directv in the near future to take full advantage of the tv set. And now here comes HD-DVD...
"And the hits just keep on coming"
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