Anamorphic vs. non-anamorphic DVDs
 

I'm confused so I hope someone can help me out. When I read DVD reviews on this webiste it will state if the DVD is in either an anamorphic or non-anamorphic widescreen version. I know what that process means in terms of feature films, but not when it comes to DVDs.

If a DVD is a widescreen non-anamorphic DVD it's still widescreen isn't it? What's the difference bewteen say a anamorphic 2:35 DVD and a non-anamorphic 2:35 DVD. The image is exactly the same isn't it?

Could someone clarify this for me?

Non anamorphic will have bars on all 4 sides. If you have a widescreen, you need anamorphic. If you have a bunch of non anamorphic DVD's, get a Panasonic DVD-RP91.

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articl...c/welcome.html

Welcome to DVDTalk...

Only on a 16:9 set. On a 4:3 set, both will look about the same. On page two of the link Johnny posted, you can find links to screen shots that explain it better than words ever could.

an anamorphic dvd will (in theory) have a higher level of detail. the anamorphic disc will use EVERY line of resolution for picture detail. the player will insert the "black bars" onto a 4:3 screen.

on the other hand, a non-anamorphic disc the "black bars" are in the frame. they eat up precious line of resolution there by reduceing the possible detail. a non-anamorphic disc played on a wide screen display 16:9 will usually distort the image or need to be zoomed to look correct

thats why most of us with 16:9 displays ONLY buy the anamorphic versions

hope that helped

Re: Anamorphic vs. non-anamorphic DVDs
 

Basically, a widescreen (16:9) TV automatically stretches an image to the side edges of the screen. But if done with a non-anamorphic source, beit a DVD or TV broadcast, the image will look stretched sideways.

An anamorphic source, has pre-stretched the image vertically, so that when the widescreen TVs stretch the image horizontally, the image won't look stretched.

And as THORN has pointed out, by having the anamorphic source prestretched vertically, by logic would require more lines of actual visual information there.

On DVDs that have 1.78 (16:9) or 1.85 transfers, the only information that the DVDs contain is picture information. 2.35 transfers have a bit of black bar within the picture information. (I think that's right, someone please correct me if I'm wrong.) This is why you still see a bit of black bar on a 2.35 film on a widescreen TV, while a 1.78 or 1.85 DVD will fill up a widescreen TV.

My thanks to everybody who has resonded to my original question. Now I understand...

I just resently began getting serious about collecting DVD's and this was the one question that I had. Now I know the difference. Now I want to make sure that my collection is anamorphic. Is there an easy way to do this using say DVD Profiler and do I just do it the manual way?

If you have all your dvds in dvd profiler just goto Tools->Charts & Graphs then Satistics->Video->Formats.

If you're a 100% anamorphic you will have equal Widescreen and 16x9 Enhanced bars.

Thanks! 10 of them are not. :( I will have to find out which ones are not.

Here are the 10:

Armageddon
Titanic
True Lies
The Princess Bride (SE is anamorphic)
What About Bob?
Hercules
Spaceballs
Office Space (SE rumored for next year should almost certainly be anamorphic)
Four Weddings and a Funeral (not sure about this one though)
Good Will Hunting - the Canadian Alliance version was anamorphic, but not the one you have (even if the packgaing indicates otherwise). I don't know about other regions, but this and The Princess Bride are the only ones you can "upgrade" to anamorphic Region 1 editions at this time.

Wow you were fast! I was just working on that as well. How did you do that? I took the XML export and did some filtering with that. Came back with the same list.

True. 'Titanic' will be re-issued in the near future (no date announced, but it was on a list), and 'True Lies' has been supposed to be upgraded forever.

Also, I would assume 'Spaceballs' will be re-issued if Mel Brooks actually does do a sequel (or is it a prequel?), as he's recently indicated.

This sort of thing always seems weird to me ... I understand wanting to understand the anamorphic thing, but the only way it matters at this time is if you have a 1.85 TV, and if you have one, you'd already know what the problem discs were (or, at least, some of 'em).

For those too lazy:

Non-anamorphic 2.35:1 on Widescreen TV:

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articl...516x9tvlbx.jpg



Anamorphic 2.35:1 on Widescreen TV:

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articl...16x9tv16x9.jpg



This is why I only have one non-anamorphic widescreen DVD.

I have a few non-anamorphic DVDs, and I really don't even notice any stretching anymore. even on regular tv I don't notice it on the 57". I think once like the hour I got the TV, I was like "that looks a little stretched" and I've never noticed it since.

Just a joke here, but do you normally see things through "walleye vision"?

I know Thorn mentioned, but does everybody skip non-anamorphic dvds and buy anamorphic?

It also matters if you have a 4:3 set capable of the vertical squeeze, or if you watch DVDs on a computer monitor (which is capable of showing the extra detail in anamorphic transfers even though it's 4:3).

Also, the process of transferring a film to video has improved a lot over the years. Some non-anamorphic DVDs have old transfers. If the transfer on a DVD is anamorphic, it's almost certainly a recent transfer using modern telecine technology, and not taken from an old laserdisc master.

SergioM: I put together a backgrounder with info on how DVD images get reformatted for widescreen displays, if you're interested.

Four Weddings and a Funeral? anamorphic or not?

I have a question here, as well as a piece of advice...

First, what does Panasonic RP-91 do that is good for owners of non-anamorphic DVDs? I have the RP-82, by the way, so I'd like to know if there are any features as yet undiscovered :)

Second: I found that DVDShrink is an excellent tool for telling whether a DVD is anamorphic or not. Just load the disc in the program, and the Preview box in DVDShrink will display images according to what DVD-ho78(DTS) has posted... Really useful little tool :)

I have found both imdb and widescreenreview are sites that can tell you whether a DVD is anamorphic or or not.

Acording to the sites I mentioned, it's not.

If you already have the DVD, but don't have a widescreen TV, you can find out if its anamorphic if you have a computer with a DVD player. Watch the DVD on your computer with something that displays the video in a window. If the window is 16x9, its anamorphic. If the the window is 4:3, its not.

your widescreen TV has no 16:9 zoom function then?

Most people without widescreen TVs can change the settings of their DVD player to "TV shape - 16x9." Non-anamorphic discs will look the same, while anamorphic discs will fill the picture, but be stretched vertically.

To change your DVD player back, go to the settings and change it to "TV shape - Standard (Letterboxed.)"

The setting "TV shape - Standard (Pan & Scan)" was for people who disliked widescreen films, but the discs have to be encoded with pan & scan information that will tell the DVD player exactly where to pan the letterboxed image. Most discs probably don't have this information, as there is either a pan & scan disc available, or the editors/directors/etc., don't wish to add this information to a widescreen film in the first place.

Why would you want a picture with half the resolution of a normal picture?

Yeah, it does. Those pictures represent the default view that I pulled from the link above. The zoom on my Sony is horrible but the "full" mode is decent. I try to not watch either since they are distracting. The only time I use "full" mode is when I watch that one non-anamorphic DVD.

Most of my TV viewing consists of HD programming & anamorphic DVD viewing, so any alteration to the pircture is easily noticable. When I watch the regular news or ESPNEWS I watch it with the black bars on the sides and really don't notice them anymore.

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.