Brian Shannon

What black bars? That is all the image there is. Who says it has to fill up the screen?

Snowmaker

I hate them too.

leahcim

Thanks for all the advice, I had some great laughs.

Since most of the things she enjoys are thing like Andy Griffith, I love Lucy, and some other old films, I decided to buy her a DVD upscaler and the BR player. She can enjoy all here Disney movies, and older stuff on the upscaler, and enjoy the newer things like We Are Marshall, Tommy Boy, etc on the BR player. I had to spend more $ but hey, you only have one mom.

Jim

^^ All BD players are DVD upscalers too, and many do a good job at it.

BuckNaked2k

You can get her a good projector and do a Constant Image Height (CIH) setup....should run you about 10 Grand.

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/2798

Solid Snake

uh...the Blu ray player does upscale your DVDs. Return the "DVD upscaler"..keep the Blu-Ray player

Groucho

I hate them as well. Especially when you walk in, there's a scratch on the record that's playing, and everybody looks at you. Finally, some guy in a big feathered hat comes up and says "What do you want, honky?"

BuckNaked2k

Yea, that and the guy who says, "You mind if we dance wif yo dates?"

Darth Maher

My uncle's TV is on permanent stretch mode. HD TV, SD cable box. Even the 16x9 programs are stretched. I just stay in the other room if I can.

Larry C.

Tell to stay away for MLK Jr BLVD

bunkaroo

I don't think it has to be art to not wanted to see it all f'ed up. I don't see how people can't notice that. I mean people don't look like that wide in real life.....well we are getting fatter as a country.

Dan

^
On that note... my brother and his wife watch Biggest Loser. They watch it on their widescreen TV, but they stretch the image to fill the screen since they watch it on a standard-def channel. I can't tell you how many times I've heard them say "Did you see [Person X] this week?? They look SO thin!"


It's funny... of all the people in my family, it seems like my MOM (who is completely NON-tech savvy... she hasn't used a computer in her life for more than 20 minutes) is the only one who thinks anything on TV looks stupid when its stretched like that. She much prefers the black bars.

Problem is, people like my brother and his wife seem to be on some sort of bullshit mission to preach their ignorance. They even went so far as changing the setting on MY TV once (when it was at my mom's for a short period of time).

[/vent]

milo bloom

Actually, we have small lamps on the media stand below our wall-mounted LCD and with those on but most other lights out, it really helps the black bars blend into the black frame of the TV. There's also those newer TVs with the lights built into the back of the set that glow on the wall, and I think those help with the bars too.


And an easy tweak I'm surprised hasn't shown up yet, is to make sure the bars are actually black, and not that ghastly glowing gray. True black bars disappear much easier than "light" black or gray ones.

clckworang

I know some people who do the same thing. You can't even talk to them about it. They just don't get it. Or they just don't care to get it. They like for all of that screen to be filled every single time! It makes me nauseous to look at a really stretched image like that. Probably the worst I've seen is the full screen DVD version of The Dark Knight stretched on a widescreen TV. I could barely bring myself to look at the screen.

Solid Snake

OMG....TDK like that...just..no. Even when it's the fullscreen..it'd look worse than stretching the widescreen

Shazam

Get a new mother.

skidmark

Well, 80% of the time ...

SI78

And we have a winner!

Alan Smithee

The problem is new TVs seem to DEFAULT to the crappiest settings- stretch everything, and use that stupid "motion enhancement" that makes film look like it was shot on video. You have to actually mess with the settings to get the right frame rate and have it show the right aspect ratio on everything. I dare just ONE TV manufacturer to ship their TVs with the defaults set to the CORRECT settings!

BTW does this mean we're gonna get "full screen" Blu-Ray discs soon? Academy films chopped on the top and bottom and scope films chopped on the sides?

Jay G.

It's already happened. Gulliver's Travels and Dragon's Lair were both altered to fill the 16:9 image on BD.

Somewhat less offensive are the IMAX films, which almost all are cropped from 1.35:1 (1.45:1 projected) to 1.66:1 on BD:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/70_mm_f..._.2815.2F70.29

DirkUSA

Somehow I expected something else when I came to this thread. Damn mind can play some ugly tricks on you.................................

DirkUSA

They have done it to some DVDs why not destroy some Blu-rays while they are at it. One of the Aladdin DVDs and also Kung Fu Season 1 come to mind plus Lionsgate did it on some 2.35 movies (Creep) and changed them to 1.78.

Hokeyboy

Is she hot?

BASISON

Kory is right in that Disney movies that were originally released as 4:3 (i.e. Snow White, Pinocchio) have a feature called "Disney View" where the black bars are filled in with artwork that somewhat match the scenes that they are in. It's nice to have but I prefer watching my movies in the way the directors intended it to be seen.

As for your Mom, your best bet is to educate her on the differences. I had to do that with my Mom as well, but she still doesn't understand on why some movies have black bars either on the top or the sides.

rdclark

It's not that hard to explain. Hand her a picture frame and a photograph that's smaller than the frame. Ask her to figure out how to use that frame with that photo. She will soon understand that the area within the frame not occupied by the photo has to be matted. The proportions of the matting will vary depending on the size and shape of the photograph.