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dvd black bars
by treestumped - 3/19/08 4:06 AMjust got a bush 37" hd lcd tv from argos. also a wafendale hd dvd upscaler. now when i play any film dvd i get black bars??? can anyone help? or suggest a differnet player?? i also have it running on a hdmi cable. many thanks.
wafendale vs. Wharfedale
by R. Proffitt
- 3/19/08 5:11 AM
In reply to: dvd black bars by treestumped
I wonder what you bought and what you are trying to play. Imagine if you were trying to upscale 4x3 content to widescreen. There can be bars.
Or that name matters as we are flooded with knockoff names often and these are often junk.
Bob
Take a deep breath and relax lol...
by stuntman_mike - 3/19/08 9:11 AM In reply to: dvd black bars by treestumpedLetterbox bars are normal on DVDs, Blu-rays, HD-DVDs, and even on TV, provided that they are being shown in their native aspect ratio. This is true even if you have a widescreen TV. Why is that?
All widescreen TVs have an aspect ratio of 16:9. When you are watching HDTV you see no letterbox bars because HDTV is formatted into 16:9 aspect ratio. The ratios are the same there fore it fills the screen perfectly. I hope you are with me so far.
Movies on the other hand, are shot in a wide variety of aspect ratios and most of them are not in 16:9. If you are watching a movie on DVD or Blu-ray or whatever, and it was shot in 16:9, then you will see no black bars. Usually independent movies, or movies that aren't required to be a visual spectacle are shot in 16:9.
Most movies have aspect ratios that are 2.35:1, 2.40:1, and sometimes even wider. These aspect ratios used to be reserved for the big budget blockbuster action movies, but nowadays even comedies and romance movies come at least in 2.35:1.
16:9 is a little less than twice as wide as it is high. The others are more than twice as wide as they are high. Because these aspect ratios are wider than a widescreen TV, there is no way for you to see the entire picture without having black bars. Still with me?
Solutions: You could change your wide mode on your TV to zoom which would make the black bars go away, but that would cut off the left and right edges of the screen, making you miss some of the movie. The higher the aspect ratio, the more of the picture would need to be cut.
My suggestion is to leave it in the full or normal or whatever the pixel for pixel mode is called on your TV, and enjoy the movie the way that the director intended you to watch it.
It takes a while for everyone to get over the fact that they still have black bars when watching a movie on their new widescreen TV, but you get used to it and it is better, in my opinion, than the alternative of cutting of the sides of the picture.
I hope this helped.
Thanks Mike for the helpful information!
by Vance14 - 3/19/08 10:18 AM In reply to: Take a deep breath and relax lol... by stuntman_mikeWhile I knew the concept, it was nice to hear the actual numbers. When I was watching on a traditional-sized television (4x3?), I would always still get letterbox format versions of movies so I could see the entire movie on the screen. But, when widescreen TV's first came out, I assumed that they were built to fit the usual movie letterbox format. So I, too, was a bit taken aback to still see "bars" on the top and bottom of some movies on my new HDTV (like the remastered Bladerunner I was watching last night). I wasn't really bothered, just a bit surprised that there were so many different ratio's out there.
One thing I am happy about is that I got a TV with a black case (rather than, say, grey or metal). This way the black "bars" just blend into the casing, and do not stand out as "bars" at all.
That is a very good point...
by stuntman_mike - 3/19/08 11:00 AM In reply to: Thanks Mike for the helpful information! by Vance14TVs that have black finishes do make black bars a little easier on the eyes.
Two caveats to that though:
In order to benefit from this, you have to movies with the lights out. A lot of people do, some don't.
The other thing is, if your TV has bad black level, the black frame can actually make it more noticeable lol.
But yeah, overall it makes letterbox less of a drag.
dvd ratio
by treestumped - 3/20/08 4:53 AM In reply to: Take a deep breath and relax lol... by stuntman_mikeso will any of argos's upscalers let me watch a movie in full screen???
It has nothing to do....
by stuntman_mike - 3/20/08 6:54 AM In reply to: dvd ratio by treestumpedwith the player. It has to do with the aspect ratio that the movie is filmed in. If it was filmed in anything other than 16:9, you will get black bars. It's as simple as that. Doesn't matter what player you play it in.
The only way to not have black bars on a movie that is filmed with a higher aspect ratio than 16:9 is to set either your TV's, or your player's wide mode to zoom. This will get rid of the black bars by zooming in to the center of the picture. The downside is that:
A. You will cut off part of the picture from both the right and left side of the screen
B. The quality of the image will go down overall because you are zooming in the picture. Kind of like when you look at a picture that you have saved on your computer and then you zoom in on it. The more you zoom, the more pixelated and blurry the image looks.
It's up to you to decide if the black bars bother you so much that you would be willing to miss part of the movie and have the image be less sharp.
Personally, I think that you should leave it with the black bars.
Not always
by batman823 - 3/20/08 11:16 AM In reply to: It has nothing to do.... by stuntman_mikeI agree with what you're saying, but there are some variances that depend on the format.
I am not trying to one-up you by any means, but here's the thing.
The aspect ratio that the movie has been filmed in was discussed. So has the ratio of the TV. But there are settings that can fix these issues.
The HDTV should have at least two modes, sometimes more. They may be labeled as "standard" and "fill" or some varince of those terms. The fill will adjust the picture provided to the TV to till the TV. M TV has a 16:9 ratio, so a 4:3 will stretch and a 2.35:1 will be thinned.
But on the DVD player itself, there should be similar settings. It should allow you to use the disc's default format, or force it to go to 4:3 or 16:9. When you do either and take into account the format that's on the disc, it may produce black bars on the top and bottom to make the 4:3 look like WS. This can cause the TV to not only recieve the black bars on a 4:3 format, but it will also stretch the image, making it look like the original complaint. If the formatting is reversed, the black bars may be on the left and right to make it fit to a 'standard' 4:3 format inside the TV screen.
With all the ways that the manufacturers try to help, the wrong mixture can be a downfall for the consumer.
On the disc itself, if the movie was shot in another format and labeled as WS, you may not be able to get rid of the black bars. It is actually part of the picture. So even though the DVD player and Tv are on the same level, the black bars are there to stay.
This problem is more common on older discs, such as late '90s and early 2000s. But newer DVDs should have no difficulty.
My suggestion would be to take two new DVDs of the same recent movie. One in Standard format and one labeled as WS. Put the WS in and make it look right using the menu options in the DVD player and the TV. Then pop in the standard DVD and make sure it looks fine as well. You may need to change the settings a couple of times, but you will find a combination that works for both formats.
My player is set to force an aspect of 16:9 and the TV is set to fill. This does not distort any DVDs or cable channels.
Stuntman_Mike is correct, but these are just some of the things that trip people up.
Hope this helps.
More on aspect ratio
by HTHMAN - 3/20/08 3:09 PM In reply to: dvd ratio by treestumpeda 16:9 screen has an aspect ratio of about 1.78:1. If you look on the back of the DVD package, the aspect ratio of the DVD is usually there, or you can look it up on Amazon and they have it in the description. If the number is larger than 1.78, you will have bars top an bottom. The bigger the number, the wider the bars. A fullscreen DVD is 4:3 or 1.33:1 so you will have black bars on the sides. Some DVDs are formatted to a 16:9 screen and that is also noted on the box.
You can use zoom or stretch or justify or panoramic or anyother image adjustment you have on your TV or DVD player to fill the screen but you will either distort the picture or cut off some of the frame.
The bigger your TV, the less you are about the bars.
batman823...
by stuntman_mike - 3/21/08 6:41 AM In reply to: dvd black bars by treestumpedYou didn't cover anything that I hadn't already said. I am well aware that there are modes on the TV and the player that can eliminate or minimize black bars, but all of them, and I mean all of them, to use Hitman's wording, distort or cut off some of the picture.
I just wanted treestumped to be aware of this fact if he should decide to use a different wide mode, so that he could weigh whether the black bars bother him so much that he would like a distorted or cut image.
The simple "take home" message
by Vance14 - 3/21/08 8:06 AM In reply to: dvd black bars by treestumpedis that movies are filmed in a specific aspect ratio (height to width), and this will not always match the aspect ratio of your screen and so it will not "fill up" your screen in every direction. You are not missing anything when this happens, unless you insist on forcing it to fit your screen, in which case you *could* miss something if it has to chop up the image to make it work. You can do some things to force it to fill up your screen, but whenever you do this, you will not end up with the exact movie that was originally created.
aspect ratio
by have the answer - 3/21/08 7:50 PM In reply to: The simple "take home" message by Vance14check in the set up menu of dvd/recorder and there might be a setting to change it in there (aspect ratio). I think you are better off watching the movie as it appears in its original format. the black bars are here to stay.
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