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Re: difference in and explaination of "Anamorphic" and "enhanced for widescreen TV"

213.1.74.152

Posted by Roland on March 23, 2001 at 14:33:01

In Reply to: difference in and explaination of "Anamorphic" and "enhanced for widescreen TV" posted by Elizabeth on March 23, 2001 at 09:24:56:

Right! Here you go!

Whether you have widescreen or 4x3 tv sets the number of pixels shown remains constant, ie 720x480 for NTSC and 720x576 for PAL. Its only the shape of these pixels that change.

DVD's can come in four "flavours" 4x3 picture will fill a 4x3 set or show as 4x3 with black strips at the side on widescreen, unless you change your set to a so called "smart" or "widescreen mode".

Next is the increasingly common mode 16x9 letterbox. In theory this should fill a widescreen tv, possibly with a black strip top and bottom if the film is say 2.35:1 (eg The Bond movies, Gladiator ect) on a 4x3 set it should always display with black strip top and bottom, (a big black strip top and bottom with the Bond/Gladiator type movies).

Next you have two types that although they are possible I have never seen myself, and its debateable if anything mainstream has been done on them! (Some anorak though is bound to shoot me down in flames for that one! lol), these are 16x9 pan and scan, which contains vector information that allows the whole frame to be shown on a widescreen set and will pan the frame to the most relevant part of the action for those viewing in 4x3 mode. And finally 16x9LB/PS (letterbox/Pan & Scan) wich gives the end user (on a 4x3 set) the option of letterboxing or pan & scan presentation.

When you are talking about "Anamorphic", strictly speaking the frame is being stretched and cut off as in your smart mode on a widescreen set, although I'm sure that plenty of these films are just being selectively framed for widescreen. Which neatley brings us to "Enhanced for widescreen", which should mean that they have subtly framed the pic for widescreen, but could also mean that they have anamorphosised the picture.

My suggestion to anyone buying a DVD title is, read a review, if its good "buy it", if its bad, ask yourself if you really want that film, and if so buy it anyway.

As I read in an earlier post, the only thing that does bug me are widescreen films encoded as 4x3 letterbox, whch can only really be viewed in zoom mode on a widescreen set, these tend to suffer quite badly from loss of definition, due to the very few lines being used.

I hope this answers your question Elizabeth, DVD is still a bit of a black art, you should see the posts I do from my industry counterparts doing the job and you would realise. Happy viewing!!

Roland

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