kitkat

I gotta agree with Cygnet74 on this one. You can stretch your image or do whatever you want with it, but when you chose to distort it you are not seeing what the director intended you to see.

exharrison

My whole point was that you are not losing the content the director wanted you to see. If you look at the original post this stems from I said explicitly content. I'm sorry, but stretching an image and sometimes cutting nearly half of it off are not the same thing. It may not be what the director wanted you to see and it may look awful, but its two different things.

the marshal

mbs> no problem with an LCD/DLP projector. Only CRT projector have burn-in problem

kitkat

Well, we disagree on this point. Yes, I see what you're saying, but I think it's pretty tortured semantics to use phrases like "you aren't missing something that the director intends for you to see" or "you are not losing the content the director wanted you to see" in regards to a distorted image. I think stretch modes fundamentally alter the image and that it goes without saying that they are not OAR - that's all I'm trying to say.

I'm not trying to stop you or attack you, though. You should enjoy your DVDs the way you like them.

FatTony

I hate when I go to someone's house and they have a TV that's worth more than my car that's not configured properly. Especially when they didn't bother configuring their DVD player either. Jerks.

gutwrencher

Bars have never bothered me. But when I bought my first HDTV, a 34" Sony Flat WS, I was bummed by how small my viddey box got. Size was key. A larger screen can sweep that problem away. I used to just watch HD programming and ws dvds....then slide dowstairs and watch the older titles and music/concert dvds on my still trusty 36" standard Toshiba. Great picture.

And nope.....just get a tummy ache and dizzy if I stretch the picture of anything. Just not right at all.

exharrison

Once again, I don't like stretch modes as I don't like how they make the picture look. All I was trying to do was say that wanting to watch movies with the OAR is not necessarily a direct conflict with using a stretch mode. You can disagree with non-OAR and stretch mode as one issue(director's vision), but they can still be two separate issues(Content vs filling screen). And I'm not gonna say whether OAR or stretch are how you have to watch movies. And don't worry, I am not going to take your comments personally.

Franchot

I agree with you on your explanation. If you've ever watched the same movie on different screens at different movie theaters, the picture quality (and sound) of the movie can vary greatly between the theaters. These "viewings" probably don't look exactly the way the director had intended the movie to look when he/she watched the finished edited version, but the movie house version comes reasonably close to what the director had intended. (And if a print is not digital and has been passed around for several months or is wrongly masked at a theater, the picture quality will be even less than what the director had intended.)

That said, how many DVDs have stickers on them that say, "This DVD's transfer has been endorsed by the film's director."? Very few. What you see on the DVD is the final product realized by the studio.

Myself, I just don't like stretching 4x3 films or zooming in on 16x9 films. Give me pillars on the side on borders on the top and bottom or both--I don't want the movie to look like something reflected from a fun house mirror. As for people who stretch or zoom--it's your DVD. You bought it, so you can view it anyway you want.

SINGLE104

This is the main reason why I purchase an LCD HDTV instead of a Plasma, so I would not have to worry about subjection of burn-in images.

Spiky

What's your TV? How long have you had it? You are probably past any worries.

nemein

You're at greater risk of burn-in early in the life of the display, but I'm pretty sure the risk never goes away. It's my understanding if you leave an image on there long enough it will burn in.

Chew

It's a Toshiba and it's about 2 years old. But, I'm under the same impression as nemein, I didn't think it was less cause for concern as it got older.

nemein

Actually I think it is less since plasmas have a 1/2 life and will eventually/gradually lose brightness which will also decrease the risk of burn-in. It never completely goes away though.

Chew

My Toshiba is a RPTV. But, those are just as likely to get burn-in as plasmas, right?

bunkaroo

I always thought this was the case.

However, we have a 42" 16:9 LCD monitor at my office that continuously displays a color map of the US (it's for status of network links), and if we put up a plain white background, you can see the outline of the map and lots of other stuff in color. How can this be? It is definitely not a plasma. It's about 2-3 years old. That image was likely being displayed 24/7 most weeks, but still, I thought LCD was not susceptible.

Any thoughts?

Steve Phillips

I have the same question as an earlier poster:

If you are concerned about burn-in when watching 4X3 material on a 16X9 set, then shouldn't you also be concerned about watching 2:35.1 movies on a 16X9 set, since there are black bars? Do you zoom them to fill the screen?

Shouldn't you have also been concerned about watching letterboxed movies on your older 4X3 sets?

It doesn't make any sense to be concerned about only one of these scenarios.

Again, just set your contrast at a normal level and quit worrying.

Chew

Since my HDTV/1.85 movies & TV on DVD shows/"stretched" everything else outnumbers my 2.35 movie watching by about 10-1 on a weekly basis, burn-in from black bars is not a concern to me. And, no zooming is done.

lizard

With respect to burn in on CRT RPTVs, I think that it isn't as big a concern as some make out (don't know about plasmas though). My Toshiba RPTV uses gray bars to reduce burn-in; perhaps black bars would be more of a problem. So long as one watches a variety of formats, and the TV is correctly calibrated (not in "torch mode") burn in shouldn't be a problem. I have been watching mostly 4:3 stuff in recent months but have never seen any hint of burn-in. But I do switch it to a 16:9 mode when I am navigating menus and the like.

On topic: The gray bars on 4:3 material really don't bother me any more. But I can't stand the various stretch modes. Like others mentioned above, I just watch the picture and ignore the bars. Black bars would be even less of a problem.

bsmith

Here is my $.02 on the discussion that if you believe in OAR then you are a hypocrite for stretching because you distort the image. Upconversion also distorts the original image so does that mean all who have upconverting DVD players are hypocrites? Obviously, not.

IMO, the issue depends on whether you can detect the distortion or not. Some display devices are not very good at stretching which makes distortion visible. However, others do a very good job and so if it does not appear distorted why would you be considered a hypocrite. It's the same issue as with zooming a non-anamorphic DVD. I've seen zoomed non-anamorphic DVDs that look better then some anamorphic DVD because the source is just better.

My projector has a smart stretch mode that maintains the center and does some stretching on the sides with minor cropping on top and bottom to maintain better proportions (and yes that does change the content to a minor degree). The end result is that if the source is clean enough then you would be hard pressed to know it wasn't orginally a wide screen image. BTW, this is on a 92" screen.

X

I don't understand this. Can you explain?

bsmith

If the DVD has 480 lines of resolution and your output is upconverted to 720 where does the content for the additional lines come from? The DVD player or output device must interpolate the source to create the new content. Therefore, by definition the image is changed along the way. Stretching algorithms also change the image.

X

So you're saying a DVD must be watched in its original form, 480 interlaced lines, to be in its OAR?

Upconversion does not change Original Aspect Ratio.

bsmith

No, I'm actually going the other way. What I'm saying is that the discussion was turning into too much about symantics in this regard and forgetting about the end result. It was becoming too black and white about the absolutes of OAR or you are called a hypocrite.

I prefer to watch movies in the OAR as presented by the director. However, I don't think stretching or upconverting takes away from this as long as you do not perceive any difference and you maximize your viewing enjoyment.

In other words, If I can maximize my display area without losing content (in my case a minimal top and bottom) and I do not perceive and distortion then what is the hang-up about calling that hypocritical.

kitkat

OAR = Original Aspect Ratio. Stretch mode changes a 4:3 image into a 16:9 one. It is changing the aspect ratio. 16:9 ≠ 4:3. Stretching a 4:3 image into a 16:9 does not preserve its OAR.

That said, if you like to watch your movies that way, go for it!

bsmith

X,

I looked at your link about OAR and while up-conversion changes the image it does not impact OAR in any way. However, the link does not deal with stretching while maintaining content. It deals with various ways that an image can be changed from what the director intended by providing more or less information. Also, it is dealing with how a DVD should be formatted for distrubution in OAR not with how a consumer chooses to present the information at home.

In my case, I have no problem with 2.35 films on my 16x9 screen (the bars do not bother me on top and bottom). However, I prefer to watch 4x3 material with stetching as long as it appears to me that I am being presented with the directors vision even though skewed a bit, as long as I can not perceive any skewing to the image. If I do, I switch to 4x3. The examples within the link you provided offer obvious examples of how the image can be negatively compromised if not presented in OAR. However, the situations I am talking about are far from obvious.