DVD Lovers and their 4:3 sets

I\'ve noticed there are many members here that collect DVDs.  More likely than not, you have a 4:3 television and prefer to view your anamorphic discs in letterbox.  If you set your DVD player to do 4:3 letterbox there is a horizontal resolution loss of about 120 lines due to the television using lines of res to paint the top & bottom of the screen with black bars.  (Take a quick glance of the top part of the pic below)

The viewing material that was originally 480i is now at 360i, a pretty dramatic decrease.  Plus the worst thing of all; your DVD player has to downconvert the 480i image to fit in a 360i box.  This usually causes a glimmering effect (Toshiba players) or an overall "softer" picture (Sony players).  Either way, you aren\'t enjoying your DVD to its fullest potential on your TV set.

Now if you did tell your DVD player that your TV was 16:9, then it would send the full 720 x 480i lines of res, but since your TV is 4:3 the picture would look vertically stretched and everything now looks taller.  The upside is that there is no resolution downconversion and your player is sending the DVD video signal as is, not to mention you\'re upping the resolution by 120 lines.

The trick here, while your player is sending out a full 480i lines of picture information (no black bar info), is to get your televsion set to decrease the picture vertically, causing the image to shrink to a normal size.  



Vertically shrinking the 480i image is called the "anamorphic squeeze trick" which is a pretty popular method that is used by many-a-home theater fanatic.  Plus, even the higher end Sony Wegas have this trick available on the remote, but for the rest of us, shrinking the picture invloves a little bit of know-how.

The way to do it can be extremely simple, or somewhat of a pain depending on your set.  Just about every TV has a secret service menu that can be unlocked by pressing several keys on your remote.  The reason manufacturers have it hidden is that if you fool with the values too much, it can damage your set or render it useless.  So of course you continue at your own risk blah blah blah...

Current JVC\'s - Very easy
Current Sony\'s - Hard
Current Toshiba\'s - Very time consuming

I\'ll stress this again; unless you have a JVC, pay extra attention to each set of instructions.  I woudln\'t want you to take your set in for repairs because of this thread.  btw- If you guys know of a better site with more TVs listed, please post em!

As for my personal recommendation, I have a 27" JVC and the squeeze trick is such a dramatic increase in quality when watching DVDs.  Not to mention the trick invloves under 5 button presses.  If I were to buy another 4:3 set for under $700 it would be a JVC soley for this reason.  Good luck!

Hmmm... Wow very informative. Thanks alot.

you talk to much

I don\'t know about American TV\'s, but here \'all\' reasonable new TV\'s can show anamorphic footage automatically. Very nice and handy.

Of course I\'d just prefer the \'real thing\' when watching DVD\'s... a 16:9 set!

ah.... I love my Sony Wega! All I do is select enhanced 16x9 mode and everything is ready.  No need to mess around with hidden settings!  If anyone has enough extra money to buy a Wega, by all means GO AND BUY IT!!!  I probably could not live without my sony!

Anyone who\'s interested in activating this and other "hidden" features of their equipment should get the Cinema 7 One For All remote.  It\'s cheap, only about $29.00 in the US, and it\'s one of the most flexible third party remotes available.  You can program "advanced codes" to make the Cinema 7 do things that even the original mfg\'s remote can\'t do, and of course you can program macros to do these multi-button keystrokes with one keypress.  Here\'s a website devoted to the Cinema 7: http://www.hifi-remote.com/ofa/

Of course I don\'t have to worry about this "squeeze trick" because I have a Toshiba 16:9 RPTV.  I\'m getting it ISF\'d in a couple months... wah hah hah hah !  

Here\'s a post from the Home Theater Spot forum on how to do this with Toshiba 4:3 projection televisions:

http://www.hometheaterspot.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=21&t=000964

Sheesh, if I had to go through this much trouble, I\'d sell the 4:3 TV and buy a 16:9 model.  They are getting much much cheaper these days.

Hmm im confussed. I watch my DVD "letterboxed" on my 4:3 set. I presumed the picture was squased to fit into this box. So I am seeing the full picture but its all sqashed into a letterbox for me.

Is this correct ? OR are you saying that all it does it adds two black bands to cover up the image ? Surely the latter isn\'t right as peoples heads would get cut off and stuff ?

RichGUK:  Your second theory is incorrect.  No heads are being chopped off...

A few assumptions first:

(1)  This anamorphic squeeze trick works only with DVDs that include a "widescreen anamorphic" version of the movie.  Sometimes they\'re labeled with something like "Widescreen enhanced for 16:9 displays."  If it just says "widescreen version," it may be non-anamorphic, which wouldn\'t work with this trick.  The labeling on DVDs is often confusing so I usually look them up on the various DVD databases on the internet to make sure.

(2)  As far as I can tell NONE of this applies to playing back DVDs on your PS2.  I\'ve done some testing on my PS2, and I don\'t think it can display DVDs in anamorphic mode.  Perhaps this will be corrected in the next version of DVD drivers released with the new Sony remote.  This post is only relevent to people who have some other dedicated DVD player. [edit: Ignore this part.  I\'ve discovered that the DVD must be stopped with the X button to change display modes.  I never use my PS2 to play DVDs, so I never bothered to figure it out... ]

(3)  You have to have a fairly modern television that can be adjusted so that the verticle axis of the picture is compressed.  Older televisions probably cannot do this.

Rather than explain the whole thing again, I suggest you read THX\'s post again.  I cannot explain it better than he did.

[videoholic]

He\'s saying that they take out lines in the picture to allow room for the letter boxing.  They aren\'t covering up anything.  What could result is a little bit of jagginess from the taking of lines out.  No biggie.  It\'s a big pain in the butt doing 16x9 on some tvs and I really would not recommend it.  If your tv is not made to do it you are really just going into the settings menu and changing your gun allignment.  I wouldn\'t suggest it.  When you go to put your setting back to 4x3 there is a possibility that the guns can become misalligned and you will notice that text and such won\'t be white anymore and you will have ghosting.  

But if you want to do it, have fun.  It does make a sharper picture.  I personally just wouldn\'t do it if I didn\'t have that option on my tv to do it automatically.

Still not completly sure but I think I know what you mean. As far as im concerned it gets squished into a letterbox. Now wheres that popcorn...

Very nice post indeed.  Makes sense to me, but thank gawd I went out and got myself a 16:9 tv..

I could see this being very usefull if you had a large 4:3 set, sony or some projection model..  But on a smaller set I would not recommend anyone doing this..

The gains would be minimal..

Once day (in a galaxy far, far away) I will own a 16:9 TV. But until I do, I\'m not screwing with the TV I\'ve got.

could someone explain 4:3 and 16:9 and their differences?  a ratio of some sort i suspect.

please pardon my ignorance, but aye, now i\'ll know.

edit: and define anamorphic if you would please.  
thanks.

4:3 means 4 units across by 3 units in height (1.33:1)



16:9 means 16 units long and 9 units tall (1.78:1)



16:9 is referred to as widescreen, and is preferred over 4:3 because:

1) Our eyes are placed horizontally and we naturally see things longer better than we do taller.  Thus 16:9 is more immersive than 4:3.  Pictures are also shot longer than they are taller.

2) When theaters became more and more popular, they wanted to create an experience audiences couldn\'t get at home with their 4:3 televsion sets.  This new widescreen format was a marvel in the early 1900\'s.

I could go on and on about anamorphic but I\'d end up confusing myself.  The best explanation I\'ve found is here.