This has been bugging me for some time; when DVD when to wide screen it was 16x9 and that was it.

However now we have Blu-Ray saying 1080p 1920x1080 with a 2.39:1 aspect ratio...

Why in the world can't all Blu-Rays be full 16x9 like they advertise and quit shrinking the picture to half the size of your screen?

You would figure with the highest quality media you would get the largest picture possible, not a squeezed one.

Does anyone understand why there is such a large flux in ratio from movie to movie?

Quote :

"The aspect ratio of an image is the ratio of the width of the image to its height, expressed as two numbers separated by a colon. That is, for an x:y aspect ratio, no matter how big or small the image is, if the width is divided into x units of equal length and the height is measured using this same length unit, the height will be measured to be y units. For example, consider a group of images, all with an aspect ratio of 16:9. One image is 16 inches wide and 9 inches high. Another image is 16 centimeters wide and 9 centimeters high. A third is 8 yards wide and 4.5 yards high."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_%28image%29



[Edited on May 5, 2010 at 11:00 PM. Reason : .]

5/5/2010 10:53:54 PM

wow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_widescreen#Film

cameras/films/lenses that they use for actual movies aren't 16x9. Directors have various artistic/whatever reasons for choosing a format "wider" than wide-screen.

When you see a movie where the screen is "filled up" that typically means that you're see LESS movie than what people saw in the cinema. They actually chop off/zoom in portions of the image to make it fit in to the puny 16:9 format.

If you want to fill up the screen, just use one of yoru TV's various zoom options.

5/5/2010 11:02:04 PM

well that really blows, thanks for the info.

I knew it had to do with theater to TV transition and I know about Anamorphic widescreen, but wasn't sure how this played into aspect chosen for each film.

Also why wasn't this an issue for DVD and Theater? Did they just cut off part of the picture in all DVD 16x9 releases?





[Edited on May 5, 2010 at 11:05 PM. Reason : .]

5/5/2010 11:04:37 PM

Quote :

"when DVD when to wide screen"

But regarding your question ... and using your link to save me time from typing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_%28image%29#Why_16:9_was_chosen_by_the_SMPTE

Quote :

"When the 16:9 aspect ratio was proposed by Dr. Kerns H. Powers, a member of the SMPTE Working Group On High-Definition Electronic Production, nobody was creating 16:9 videos. The popular choices in 1980 were: 4:3 (based on television standard's ratio at the time), 1.66:1 (the European "flat" ratio), 1.85:1 (the American "flat" ratio), 2.20:1 (the ratio of 70 mm films and Panavision) and 2.35:1 (the CinemaScope ratio for anamorphic widescreen films). Dr. Powers cut out rectangles with equal areas and shaped them to match each of the popular aspect ratios. When overlapped with their center points aligned, he found that all of those aspect ratio rectangles fit within an outer rectangle with an aspect ratio of 1.77:1 and all of them also covered a smaller common inner rectangle with the same aspect ratio 1.77:1.[5] The value found by Powers is exactly the geometric mean of the extreme aspect ratios, 4:3 (1.33:1) and 2.35:1, which is coincidentally close to 16:9 (1.78:1). The inclusion of the intermediate ratios into consideration is pointless, as they can have no effect on the result. While 16:9 (1.78:1) was initially selected as a compromise format, the subsequent popularity of HDTV broadcast has solidified 16:9 as perhaps the most important video aspect ratio for the future.[citation needed] Most 4:3 (1.33:1) and 2.39:1 video is now recorded using a "shoot and protect" technique[6] that keeps the main action within a 16:9 (1.78:1) inner rectangle to facilitate HD broadcast. Conversely it is quite common to use a technique known as center-cutting, to approach the challenge of presenting material shot (typically 16:9) to both a HD and legacy 4:3 audience simultaneously without having to compromise image size for either audience. Content creators frame critical content or graphics to fit within the 1.33 raster space.[citation needed] Audiences generally do not see such centrally framed information as distracting.[citation needed] However, audiences of 16:9 ratio scenes can find odd moving elements that are centrally framed.[citation needed] 4:3 content upconverted to a 16:9 standard is generally referred to as pillar boxed and many high definition television networks have adopted decoratively branded logos to fill the null area."

Simply put, yes, they cut off film to make it 16:9. But there are plenty of DVDs that aren't 16:9 ... one of my favorite movies, Lawrence of Arabia, is a great example (2.20:1).

5/5/2010 11:20:56 PM

those bastards!

so basically Blu-Ray is using a more "pure" form of aspect ratio than DVD resulting in a smaller picture on screen.

5/5/2010 11:25:01 PM

I think "pure form" is the wrong terminology ... but I think studios are keeping themselves more concerned with maintaining the original aspect ratio and letting the viewer use their TV to perform transformations if they want it to fill the whole screen (ie, using the Aspect Zoom function on your TV or DVD player)

5/5/2010 11:31:10 PM

There were TONS of DVDs in non 16x9 format. This is not a new thing for blu rays.

5/5/2010 11:50:27 PM

5/6/2010 12:42:24 AM

[Edited on May 6, 2010 at 1:18 AM. Reason : .]

5/6/2010 1:18:16 AM

I don't see any trolling in this thread

Also every single Wide Screen DVD I have is in 16x9 with no borders unless it's a 4x3 (which is Standard)

Can you name a few popular WS DVDs with aspect ratios different from 1.85:1? Maybe I just never noticed.







[Edited on May 6, 2010 at 7:54 AM. Reason : .]

5/6/2010 7:50:32 AM

Last Samurai
Independence Day
Old School
Wedding Crashers

etc.

5/6/2010 8:34:11 AM

Quote :

"Can you name a few popular WS DVDs with aspect ratios different from 1.85:1? Maybe I just never noticed."

There are TONS.
Maybe your TV is set to zoom to fill the screen on whatever input your DVD player is using (and set to native on your Blu-Ray input)?

This is assuming you're using a different input for your DVD player & Blu-Ray player.

5/6/2010 10:17:57 AM

Quote :

"Also every single Wide Screen DVD I have is in 16x9 with no borders unless it's a 4x3 (which is Standard)"

Actually, unless its a DVD of a TV show, every single one of them has a border...its just a matter of how big that "border" is. If the OAR of the film is 2.35:1, then its pretty big and noticeable...if the OAR is 1.85:1, its pretty thin, and probably wont be seen on most HDTVs due to overscan.

Blu-ray is doing nothing different than DVD...other than the video actually being 16:9, rather than being anamorphic like DVD. Nothing is being shrunk, stretched, squeezed, etc, unless the viewer (in this case, moron) chooses to do so themselves.

5/6/2010 5:58:06 PM

What pisses me off is they they actually encode 280 lines of black bars (26% of the picture) and sell 800 lines as "1080p". Those black bars consume a fair amount of the encoding bitrate because the sharp edges are hard to resolve using DCTs because they have a high frequency content. If they just encoded it at 1920x800 and let the player add the black bars, then that bandwidth could be spent encoding the actual picture content. Additionally, the player would be able to tell that the film is not the same aspect as your display and crop automatically if that's what you wanted or use custom bars to fill the unused space.

The main feature on all Blu-Ray discs is encoded at 1920x1080 with black bars added if it doesn't fit in the frame, which is completely stupid.

5/6/2010 6:19:36 PM

Quote :

"Actually, unless its a DVD of a TV show, every single one of them has a border...its just a matter of how big that "border" is. If the OAR of the film is 2.35:1, then its pretty big and noticeable...if the OAR is 1.85:1, its pretty thin, and probably wont be seen on most HDTVs due to overscan."

That's crap. A very large number of DVDs are encoded in 16:9 that aren't TV shows. Hell, I just checked 5 DVD rips (the source files, not transcoded) from my collection (A Guy Thing, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Marie Antoinette, Saved, The Virgin Suicides) and all of them have display aspect ratios of exactly 16:9.

5/6/2010 6:34:58 PM

^^It depends on the compression being used on whether the black bars take up a lot of space or not. Regardless, its probably a lot easier to make everything 16:9 than to have the player handle each aspect ratio differently...not like theres only 2-3 ARs to consider.

^Reading comprehension is good...I didnt say anything about DAR not being 16:9.

5/6/2010 8:11:53 PM

Quote :

"If they just encoded it at 1920x800 and let the player add the black bars, then that bandwidth could be spent encoding the actual picture content."

Ehhhhhh........the bit rates that the AVC/VC-1 streams on Blu-rays are encoded at are overkill for the most part. The limiting factor for the picture is ALWAYS the quality of the source.

5/6/2010 8:23:28 PM

Not true. The easy way to tell is to look closely at the edge of the black bar. If it's not razor-sharp (i.e. color bleeds into the black bar or vice versa), then the bitrate is not high enough to fully resolve the source frame. The worse the edge looks, the worse the rest of the frame matches the source. This is noticeable on probably 30% of the Blu-Rays I've seen (I've seen a 178 on Netflix so far that were not 16:9). Also, a lot of newer movies are coming from 4K (4096x2160) ~50-100Mbps sources.

5/6/2010 10:57:14 PM

^^^^ so what you’re saying is that the blurays aren’t encoded anamorphically

[Edited on May 6, 2010 at 11:18 PM. Reason : ]

5/6/2010 11:16:23 PM