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Are any DVDs actually widescreen (instead of letterbox)?
Jedi Master Thrash - Feb 11, 2007
  Jedi Master Thrash Feb 11, 2007
Having given myself a widescreen projector for christmas, I've been running through many of my widescreen DVDs. But I've been disappointed because it seems that every DVD I own that says "widescreen, anamorphic, optimized for widscreen TVs, buzzword buzzword etc" are still actually just letterbox DVDs.

Are there any actual widescreen DVDs? Is there a particular wording on the box that you can use to tell if they're actually telling the truth about it being widescreen?

Or is my DVD player just dumb and downconverting the widescreen signals because it assumes it's only connected to a regular TV?

Just another thing to chock up to the list of reasons why I hate DVDs. Every single DVD I've ever watched, even fresh out of the shrinkwrap, have at least 3 spots where the video skips. Usually at chapter breaks. And the Die Hard DVDs kept getting the audio out of sync. I had to keep pausing it and restarting to sync it back up. And the new Star Wars (original) DVDs, in the second half of Empire, the blue color is shifted right as you go towards the right side of the screen, and there's a thin band on the left side of the screen that's devoid of the color red.

Sometimes you hit a really bad spot in a DVD fresh out of a sealed box, where it completely freezes and even crashes the DVD player. What's up with that? Is my Samsung running Windows 98 inside or something? The dvd software should be robust enough to realize when it's getting bit errors in a keyframe and keep reading past it until it can sync back up. I usually try those in several DVD players. Some DVD players you can fast forward far enough (sometimes it takes like 10 minutes of video) to get past. Others it freezes or crashes.

I say fresh out of sealed box to indicate that these problems aren't caused by scratches. The discs are clean.

I think about 3 times in my life I've managed to have a VHS crash my VCR (the tape was bent in a spot and got jammed in the heads). But with DVDs, it's every single DVD that has some problem. If not a skip, then audio sync or color bleeding issues. Whats up with that? Is everyone just using cheap offshore DVD transfer factories or something?

It's like network TV nowadays. It's all being run digitally, even if they convert it to analog to reach your TV. Every single time I watch a "DVD on TV", or any movie, at least twice somewhere during the movie you can see the encoding break down and the frames freeze and get huge pixilations. Even some regular TV shows will drop out with clear digital defects.

It's just kind of annoying however everyone embraces high-tech because it has to be the next great thing. But just because it's high and tech doesn't mean it's always great. But usually it could be if it was just well designed, tested, and made more robust.

 Mask of Destiny Feb 11, 2007
AFAIK, a widescreen DVD is indeed widescreen on the disc; however, a fair number of films are shot in a format that's a good bit wider than a 16:9 TV and requires a bit of letterboxing in the video encoded on the disc.

I've never had any problems with a new DVD skipping and I don't think my DVD player has ever crashed (my cable box on the other hand...) though I also own a Samsung player (C631p 5 DVD changer). I have noticed some macro-blocking from time to time, but I've never noticed any wierd color shifts though I'm only using a 27" SDTV via S-Video. Sounds like your player is a lemon.


  
	
	

		
		

			It's like network TV nowadays. It's all being run digitally, even if they convert it to analog to reach your TV. Every single time I watch a "DVD on TV", or any movie, at least twice somewhere during the movie you can see the encoding break down and the frames freeze and get huge pixilations. Even some regular TV shows will drop out with clear digital defects.


What service are you using? Cable, Sattelite, broadcast? Generally speaking, all of the major artifacts are introduced by last mile providers. Sattelite is particuarly bad when it comes to compression because of bandwidth limitations though some of the digital channels on digital cable can look a bit rough too.

 Malakai Feb 11, 2007
All 2.4x:1 aspect ratio discs are actually letterboxed, because no television is capable of doing that ratio, which means you're going to have black bars on them.

However, there are several 1.7/8x:1 ratio discs, which are able to fill in a widescreen. Resident Evil, Slither, Terminator, Hell Night, Texas chainsaw massacre 1 and 2 (original), thx 1138, twelve monkeys, true lies, and many others.

If you still see black bars in 1.7/8x:1 material, then you probably need to turn off 4:3 mode on your dvd player and set it to 16:9

 Jedi Master Thrash Feb 11, 2007
Yeah, I know that extra-wide aspect ratios will have more blank space at the top and the bottom. I'm not talking about that.

What I'm talking about is the actual pixel output of the DVD. A widescreen DVD should output 720x480 pixels, compared with a letterbox or 4:3 DVD which outputs 640x480 pixels.

So my "widescreen" DVDs are being output as letterbox 640x480, rather than widescreen 720x480.

You can tell because the projector has displays choices for 4:3, 16:9, letterbox, and native. If you do a 4:3 ratio on a true widescreen video, the video should appear horizontally compressed, becuase the 720 vertical lines are being compressed into the 4:3 ratio. When you select Widescreen view, it then expands that 4:3 horizontally to fill the 16:9 frame, and then the aspect becomes correct.

However, with letterbox, when you view 4:3 ratio, you see the letterboxed video within the 4:3 (640x360 pixels). So viewing it as widescreen ends up with an overly stretched horizontal view. You have to use letterbox mode which is a just a zoom.

You can double verify this with native mode, which shows you pixel for pixel the input source.

I've used a sony 5-disc DVD, a sony DVD+VHS combo, a Samsung DVD, a PS2, and on my computer a creative DVD drive and pioneer DVD drive with creative, windows, and k-lite software.

All of them have the same DVD skipping issues. And when one DVD is bad, I try it on two other players, and the DVD is bad in the same spot on all the players.

My TV comes through Comcast cable (non-digital).

Thanks,

JMT.

 Kuta Feb 11, 2007
So where are you getting these DVDs from then? I've never had skipping problems with new DVDs either.

 dibz Feb 11, 2007
I believe the skipping issues actually just depend on your DVD player. I've had players that don't skip at all (actually -- my cheap ones don't skip!) and some that do. I also believe that the "skipping" isn't actually related to chapter breaks, rather it's when the disc drive switches layers on the disc to continue. Some players simply handle that better.

I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain it's something like that.

 VertigoXX Feb 11, 2007
The only time I've had real problems with new discs skipping is when my old DVD player was placed in the stereo cabinet with another device on top of it. It would overheat and cause discs to skip or freeze. (My newer player is one of the small, cheapo ones, and it sits above the TV beside my GCN and under my PSX.) Is it possible that your player is overheating?

As for the aspect ratio... The only thing I can think of is if your player has a menu on it to choose the output.

 dibz Feb 12, 2007
Every DVD Player I've had has had a menu to select what aspect ratio to use. Every single one of them was accessed the same way too, make sure there is no discs in it and hit Menu on the remote to bring it up.

 BigRed667 Feb 12, 2007
All NTSC dvds are encoded as 720x480 independently of aspect ratio. Make sure to set the DVD player to 16:9 aspect ratio (if you're using a computer, set the resolution to one with a 16:9 aspect ratio, for example 1280x720), on a PS2 you have to set the aspect ratio to Full, not 16:9 as one might assume. If your tv says it's 640x480 then it's because it samples 640 pixels on the width from an analog signal.

 Jedi Master Thrash Feb 12, 2007
That's for all the help. I'll look at it some more when I get home. It's confusing that you don't have access to all the DVD menus when a disc is in the drive. That's kinda dumb.

 Amon Feb 12, 2007
Hey just a quick note, havent read through the whole forum. Occationally my dvd player skips new disks when switching between the layers on a duel layer dvd. It is most notable on the Legue of Extraordinary Gentlemen DVD.

 VertigoXX Feb 14, 2007
Wasn't there a defective batch of LXG DVD's out there when it was first released?

 lordofduct Feb 15, 2007
I don't know about the skipping issue.

But as for 'real' wide screen DVDs. There are two types of widescreen out there in use on standard def DVDs (non HD-DVD or Blu-Ray). Anamorphic and Letterboxed.

Anamorphic can be manipulated to whatever size screen you have and look how it is intended when you use a widescreen. But when shown on a 4:3 scrren images look stretched and ugly.

Letterboxed is encoded with the black bars on top and bottom. A widescreen then zooms in on the image to cut off the bars... as for 4:3 TVs there is a "pan track" that is the 'pan and scan' data telling the DVD player where to look on the image for that scene (which used to be fully done in editing with everything else cut off for VHS). If there is no 'pan track' then the DVD player usually center zooms on the image or just leaves the bars for your 4:3 set.

Best way to tell if you have letterboxed or anamorphic is two ways.

1) it says on the box if it is one or the other (usually on the DVDs released as both wide and full)

2) the DVD is sold in two flavors; wide or full. The wide usually is done in anamophic where as the full has the 'pan track' or has all the unneeded image cut out (conserves data size).

I have had a few disks bugger up on me like that as well. Usually in box sets. 'Lolita' from my Kubrick box set did that to me and 'Polyester' from my John Waters box set did it as well. 'Lolita' was on a crappy old 50 dollar DVD player from Wal-Mart several years ago and the DVD player itself has crashed more then 2 years ago now... haven't tested it since. As for the Polyester it crashed on my girlfriends DVD player... which I believe is a crap player as well.

Try playing it in your computer, see if it screws up as well.

Oh yeah, and my copy of "ich the killer' does it to me on EVERY player. But that was bought at a pawn shop for 2 bucks. So there could be a thousand reasons for that one.... so what 2 bucks ain't nothing.

 mtxblau Feb 27, 2007

Mask of Destiny said:
What service are you using? Cable, Sattelite, broadcast? Generally speaking, all of the major artifacts are introduced by last mile providers. Sattelite is particuarly bad when it comes to compression because of bandwidth limitations though some of the digital channels on digital cable can look a bit rough too.



....Comcast. Ugh.


Having worked at comcast, usually these things are problems at the premise itself. Poor quality coax, failing splitters, and the always painful outside drop being chewed on by squirrels (that was pretty common issue, believe it or not).


If the analog end is suffering that many problems, you'd have nothing but pain and frustration with the digital service.


Without getting boring, do you have HSI through comcast? Consider monitoring any drops in your service. If so (likely, based on what you described) then it's a whole system fault.


Or if you live in a non urban or non suburban area, it could just be the node. They let those things go to full failure before replacing the cards (ten modems offline on one street? And they're neighbors? they could just have their modems turned off! - was actually told this).

 tsumake Feb 27, 2007
Hold a sec: I'm pretty sure that an anamorphic disc will automatically letterbox the film if played on a 4:3 set.