Blu-ray growth set to continue

OmegaRED

This is due to aspect ratios of the various movies. Some will have large borders while others may have very small ones. Movie screens are massive and much longer than any HDTV so to cram the picture properly for home viewing there has to be bars at the top. As far as I know, you should be able to zoom when you are viewing from a PC but then you will cut off much of the movie and the picture quality will also degrade.

For Transformers 2, the IMAX scenes (such as the forest fight) filled the entire screen but then it switches back to the regular film print with borders. This is normal. Remember, widscreen tv's are 16:9 ratio but if you look at the back of any DVD or Blu-Ray it will say something like Widscreen 2:35:1 which is why we're stuck with the black bars.

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Jac

The black bars are annoying but movies still look best in their proper 21:9 format.

I watch movies mostly on my PC so for me the ideal monitor would be a true 21:9 display. Using OLED so any black bars are truly black and not a dim grey like they are on TFTs. I'd like it to be the same pixel pitch and height of my current display just with the extra width. For OS use I could select a standard 16:10 widescreen, ignoring the far edges, only moving to full screen for movies.

Philips do a true 21:9 52" Cinema display already.

Rayder

You guys just don't get my complaint at all.

Lowfat

I can't stand it when studios crop the picture for 16:9 TV's (no black borders). They are cutting off like 20% of the picture. Most new DVD's are going to be the same way because studios are finally realizing that almost everyone hates movies cropped to fit their screen.

The Transformers 2 you say was the Imax version, the sceens that were 16:9 were scenes that were done specifically for the Imax screens. The same thing happens w/ Dark Knight and personally i think it is annoying.

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Lowfat

You want movies to fill your whole screen? Well when you are doing this you are cutting off ~ 20% of the movie out. Most people don't want this which is why there are no options to do this.

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OmegaRED

Raydar is one of those people who always buys the Fullscreen movies that no one else touches

I hate the black bars too but every time a movie starts and the bars are very tiny I smile inside just a little.

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Rayder

LIKE I SAID!

Regular DVD's have a way to zoom the screen to FILL the screen through Media Center. BluRay & PowerDVD does not. I don't give a crap about a little of the mostly useless video cut off the sides, it bugs me more to see those damn black borders.

Why is it that when I watched King Kong on HDTV, it FILLED the widescreen and looked great, but the BluRay Disk I BOUGHT does not and suffered in detail because of those retarded borders? Could they not add an option to have it fill the screen for peeps that hate the borders? Yes, they most definitely could have. Why don't they?

I tolerated that border crap on 4:3 TV's but I feel it's unacceptable on a 16:9 TV.

Yes, I understand that many movies are in a whacked-out aspect that conforms to nothing outside of a movie theater. But why should I be forced to tolerate it on BluRay disks when regular DVD's have work arounds for that crap with a simple button click? Not to mention that theaters and drive-ins are dying off anyway. They should make the movies to conform to the current 16:9 standard, not work against it. If these movie people have all this creative talent they think they do, why can't they film their movies in an aspect that actually conforms to the tech out there for peeps to use at home?

The statement that most people prefer to have the borders is pure BS. EVERYONE I know in real life HATES them and they all feel that to be forced to tolerate it is ridiculous. As far as I'm concerned, when I see those borders, it means I'm not getting true 1920x1080 res out of that BluRay disk and I just got ripped off. I also understand that when the picture is blown up to fill the screen, you lose some resolution....who the hell cares? I can still see it fine. Oh, I lose a little off the sides of the movie, so what? That isn't where the focus is anyway.

I respect that some people actually like not having the screen filled and would rather have those borders of emptiness to preserve the original theater presentation. But you shouldn't be forced to look at it that way if you don't want to......just like how King Kong filled the 16:9 aspect on an HDTV broadcast, it could be done. They just choose to screw people by not providing such options.

OK, so instead of arguing viewpoints, let me ask you this. Is there a program for playing BluRay on a PC that will allow me to force the movie to fill the screen when it has those lame borders on a 16:9 TV? That's all my reply was really intended to find out anyway.

Jac

You could try running BD discs in MPC-HC. People over on the Doom9 forum have been messing about with this. It looks like it requires downloading a specific set of codecs and running the stream files directly off the disc, probably require anyDVD hd as well.

In fact it looks like more trouble than it's worth but if these black bars are enough to make you type out a novel like the post above you might be interested in trying it.

BlueMak

Did you even read what I said about VLC?

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Rayder

VLC is what?

humonous

Well I hate to add to your frustration here, but actually what you have been doing in the past is zooming in on the video so the quality is suffering, its a little like using a magnifying glass to zoom in the video so it fills the screen while it cuts off quite a bit from either side - every movie is shot in a specific format, so you may see bigger 'black bars' top and bottom as they aren't all made to fit a 16:9 or 16:9 tv perfectly.

Your tv should have zoom override options - although I think most tv makers are removing the options because its rather frowned upon as quality suffers drastically. This is why 4:3 screens are basically non existant now, you aren't seeing the movies in the way they are meant to be seen. I am a bit surprised you say its 'useless crap' on either side of the image, quite often there can be a lot going on in those areas in some films, if you have zoomed in that much you aren't seeing it at all, its actually ruining the content of the film!

VLC is a free media player btw, google it.

Rayder

I did Google VLC after my last reply. As long as it lets me zoom to fill the screen, thus eliminating the black borders at the top and bottom of the screen (forget the lost video on the sides), on a 16:9 HDTV without screwing up the aspect ratio (doesn't make people fat or skinny) while watching a store-bought BluRay disk, I'll be happy.

I figure that if BluRay is so much higher res, even if I zoom it to fill the screen, it will still look better than a regular DVD will at max quality. But all the zoom functions that work for regular DVD's don't work (greyed out) for BluRay in any of the apps I've tried.

If I just had those controls, I wouldn't be here arguing about freakin' borders on my movies.

I'll look into VLC. (I'm not on our Vista HTPC right now) But I'd still like to know why zoom/pan&scan controls are greyed out for BluRay in PowerDVD and Media Player Classic.

dj_stick

probab;y because the apps/codecs the apps use don't support those features

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Zardon

I actually get were Rayder is coming from here. You buy a 42 or a 52 inch Plasma and sometimes you are watching movies with 1/3 the screen gone due to the original format.

I can't say I would ever zoom in on an image however as im the annoying bloke you hate watching a movie with, I normally watch 5 mins of a film first and tweak the picture for that specific film as best I can then start it again when im happy, it drives anyone im with bonkers. So the thought of losing even 2% of image quality wouldn't appeal to me.

That said, tonight for instance I was watching Horsemen, the Michael Bay movie and the format on bluray was exactly 16:9 (give or take 10-20 pixels). It was refreshing to see the whole 42 inch plasma 'being used', even the lady I was with noticed it as we have been watching some pretty extreme widescreen movies recently.

I can understand the directors not wanting to compromise on their artistic vision and making the images as 'wide' a format as they desire but sometimes it really does suck to have a big tv and lose about 1/3 of the screen on black nothingness. Perhaps they should compromise and make a perfect 1920x1080 'version' of the film on the bluray, so purists can watch the original format and other people like Rayder can watch the home screen 'tv friendly' version. At least if it was digitally mastered in both formats the quality loss would be minimal (and the 16:9 image could be adjusted from scene to scene to keep any cropping optimal). Can't see it ever happening mind you.

BlueMak

Zardon, is Horsemen any good? I was going to watch it tonight.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Zardon

not really, would have made a decent TV movie, but overall quite forced and somewhat predictable - still watchable though.

BlueMak

Thank you, I am going to watch it because of Dennis Quaid, one of my favourite actors. I recently watched another two of his films, GI Joe (it was fun but shallow), and Pandorum, which was very Event Horizon like and I enjoyed it very much.

I think I will start at 4am lol

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Lowfat

Its Micheal Bay, need I say more?

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BlueMak

He has worked on fun films, it is just that the description sounds like a slow suspense full movie and not full blown action. I am fine either way. Going to watch it any min now.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Zardon

Yes, no explosions at all, as far as I can remember. hard to believe.

Judas

there are many blu-ray movies that are exactly 16:9

Shrek 3 is one of them that uses the entire 1920x1080 resolution.

But alot of directors PREFER specific formats, they want a super wide viewing space resulting in the bars, and the intend that right from the start, EVEN at movie theaters (i've seen plenty that do NOT fill the screen)

It's there form of art, and from their point of view, it's the way they want to do it, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with fitting a specific theater or whatever, not always, i mean course they'll fit a standard of sorts, but untill they sort it out... tough..

I swear in powerDVD 9, i can select the aspect ration to forcefully either stretch or "zoom" to fit the entire screen for any dvd/video/blu-ray movie i like.

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