Anamorphic Widescreen Movies

[George99]

Hello,

I'm familiar with Anamorphic Widescreen DVDs and they are great with a digital HDTV set.  In case you're not familiar with them they basically retain the full vertical resolution, 480 lines, but squeeze the horizontal size somewhat.  Then your DVD player can output them in its wide screen format and your HD TV can unsqeeze them to get full wide screen and a very good picture. (Probably over simplified explanation...).

Anyway, I was looking at TWC movies on demand program guide and saw that several movies were in standard and some in wide screen format.  Since wide screen often means Anamorphic Widescreen on DVDs, I was wondering if these wide screen movies were Anamorphic Widescreen.  Or are they simply letterboxed?

[Dennis G.]

I've purchased a couple of "widescreen" movies on TWC's MOD and they are definitely letter-boxed.  An inordinately wide top and bottom bar on my 16:9 set but, it may just be the way I have the TV set up.  And, MOD is catering to the majority of their subscribers with 4:3 aspect ratio TV's.

If I were to order one of the widescreen offerings via the converter on the 4:3 Sony attached to it the top and bottom bars might not be as noticeable.

[borghe]

all "widescreen" movies are letter boxed on cable and satellite.. sad.. at least directv correctly calls them letterboxed.

DirecTV boxes (all of them) actually have the ability to send out an anamorphic picture and actually convert it to a 4:3 screen depending on your preferences (same as a DVD player) however aside from a few tests I don't ever remember this being used.

[Skipjack]

however aside from a few tests I don't ever remember this being used.

Probably didn't want all the calls into customer service from the 4:3 users who couldn't figure it out:  "Why are all the people tall and skinny?"

[George99]

Quote: "Probably didn't want all the calls into customer service from the 4:3 users who couldn't figure it out: "Why are all the people tall and skinny?"

That's probably true... but the DVD users seem to handle it ok.  Also, why couldn't cable offer it on a few movies as an experiment?  I would be more inclined to buy one then.   As more people get digital TVs there will be more of a market.  But they are probably waiting for the big convert to all HD... waiting around the corner...

[borghe]

Probably didn't want all the calls into customer service from the 4:3 users who couldn't figure it out:  "Why are all the people tall and skinny?"

actually, just like a DVD player, all D* boxes ship in 4:3 mode obviously You have to set your box to 16:9, otherwise the box will do automatic conversion to letterbox for you.

so the only thing cusomters would have had to complain about are those "damn black bars".

what is funny is that D* receivers have been like this pretty much from the start. So they could have actually done anamorphic widescreen back in like 1995.. even though the sets weren't out then to support it (I don't believe at least).

[SRW1000]

what is funny is that D* receivers have been like this pretty much from the start. So they could have actually done anamorphic widescreen back in like 1995.. even though the sets weren't out then to support it (I don't believe at least).

Dish network had the same feature in their older receivers, but I don't beleive they ever used it.

There were 16X9 sets back then, although they weren't overly popular and I don't think they were HD - just widescreen.

Scott

[borghe]

The first widescreen set I remember seeing was a Toshiba at Flanners in 1997 (480i only). I have been into home theater and at Flanner's pretty regularly since getting my Pioneer Elite laserdisc player from them in 1995 so if there was a set before 1997 then they didn't carry it. Of course that could always be possible, I am just saying I sure didn't know about it.

[SRW1000]

The first widescreen set I remember seeing was a Toshiba at Flanners in 1997 (480i only). I have been into home theater and at Flanner's pretty regularly since getting my Pioneer Elite laserdisc player from them in 1995 so if there was a set before 1997 then they didn't carry it. Of course that could always be possible, I am just saying I sure didn't know about it.

Well, you got my curiosity going, so I had to look it up.  I found the following at this site:

http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/television2.html

1993 - Thomson introduced CinemaScreen, the first widescreen TV available in the U.S. (but analog, not yet digital).

The first one I saw was at the Panasonic outlet store at the Gurnee Outlet Mall, which was sometime in the mid-'90s.  I think the price was around $3500, but it was refurbished.  The picture was nice, for the time, bad, but would look poor compared to today's models.

Scott

[borghe]

well, looks like I didn't know about it.

Wow, that is some time ago. It is curious that they would have released widescreen sets before DVD. You could have used expand mode on like a laserdisc I suppose but laserdiscs were still NTSC with a .9 pixel aspect ratio. You would have had to use a true expand mode which probably would have degraded the picture worse than any quality you would gain from not having black bars...

go figure