On 1/1/2011 11:35 PM, Ron Economos wrote:
These classic titles are 4:3 films, but they are encoded as 16:9 in the HD resolution (either 1920x1080 or 1280x720) coded video bitstream. The black sidebars are part of the 16:9 image. When you instruct the player that you have a 4:3 display attached, it dutifully letterboxes the 16:9 image to create a properly dimensioned display. The player has no way to know that there were black sidebars in the image. For these 4:3 films, the result is dimensionally correct, but does not fill the 4:3 display's screen (it's "postage stamped"). There are a couple of ways to handle this issue: 1) Some sort of AFD like metadata. That is, something that can instruct the player that it's 4:3 content in a 16:9 raster. 2) A true 4:3 HD format such as 1440x1080 (with the aspect ratio set to 4:3, not 16:9). Solution #2 (1440x1080 with 4:3 aspect ratio) was actually included in early versions of the HD-DVD specification. It did not make it into the final specification, most likely because there's little or no encoding equipment that can create a 1440x1080 4:3 aspect ratio bitstream when fed a 1920x1080 16:9 raster. Solution #1 is a lot of added complexity to solve a point problem. 99 and 44/100 percent of Blu-Ray enthusiasts have a 16:9 display. To quote Mr. Spock, "Were I to invoke logic, however, logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
I wonder what Mr. Spock would say were he one of the few? I bit the bullet and purchased an $1100 box that solves the problem. It also does a lot of other very handy things for anyone working with experimental television, but it still cost me $1100 bucks thanks to the techno-snobs behind Blu-Ray who think they have a handle on how the world watches television. Cliff ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org
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