Letterbox is annoying, even on new 61" TV!

"James Egan" wrote in message
. ..
On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 18:33:27 -0400, Guest wrote:


"James Egan" wrote in message
. ..
On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 14:05:05 -0400, Guest wrote:

I can't believe that some people are STILL asking this question and
acting
as if there is something wrong. I also find it hard to believe that
someone
would spend the kind of money that he did and NOT know what the hell he
was
getting into. It boggles the mind, but then again, I have a buddy who
buys
things just to impress people and he does not know what it is or does
as
long as it costs and not many have it.


I can't believe that someone is so stupid and so immature. Of course
I'm familiar with letterbox,

If that was the case, there is no reason for you to be surprised or
annoyed.

but not with letterbox and LARGE screen
TV's.

? So by your twisted logic, the larger the screen gets, the more th
epicture fills up the screen? Common sense man, common sense!


Different TV's have different aspect ratios dip-****. Common sense!

Different ratios or not, the ratio will stay the same regardless of size for
any ratio, "highly paid professional."



It was more of a comment. You are so off base with your asinine
comment, one would think that you are some immature childish juvenile,
but I doubt it.

I see that you have some new words that you looked up. It seemed to be
very
hard for you to spell or even use the simple ones in their proper
context.


I'm a highly paid professional, but what are you?

I am a moderately paid (by CT standards) professional who has actual common
sense!

Go away ninny,
you're wasting bandwidth, and causing me to do the same.


You wasted your with this bull**** question.

"Mark" wrote in message
...

"Guest" wrote in message
...
I can't believe that some people are STILL asking this question and
acting as if there is something wrong. I also find it hard to believe
that someone would spend the kind of money that he did and NOT know what
the hell he was getting into. It boggles the mind, but then again, I
have a buddy who buys things just to impress people and he does not know
what it is or does as long as it costs and not many have it.

The questions will probably continue for years. There is no way to know
what part of the population still do not know or do not understand current
technology. I recently had to inform someone that the OTA TV they have
been watching for the last 8 months was not really HD - they did not know
that they had to tune to the digital HD channels instead of the same old
analog channels they were used to watching with the old non-HDTV.

I guess things will get easier when everything is HD. Now you know why the
Japanese market their products differently for the USA then they do for Asia
and Europe...

"James Egan" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 16:33:55 -0400, Matthew L. Martin wrote:

James Egan wrote:
On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 09:57:59 -0500, Peter H. Coffin wrote:

Your screen is 1.7:1. The movie's 2.35:1 How is it supposed to use the
whole screen?


My point is the directors think that this format is wonderful,
and the rest of us that watches it do not.

Please speak for yourself. Directors choose aspect ratios for reasons
having to do with the story being told.

My point was it
is annoying to buy a 61" TV, then loose have the picture.

That would be "lose".

It's too bad you are annoyed. If you could be bothered to learn *why* a
director chooses an aspect ratio, you might learn to appreciate
wide-screen movies.

If you don't agree with that, what can I say?

I don't agree with that. You could say that you are willing to learn why
others are more than satisfied by being able to see movies in the
director's chosen aspect ratio.

Too bad David Lean can't explain it to you.

http://www.davidlean.com

He chose to use virtually every aspect ratio available over the course
of his career. Each choice was deliberate and related to the way he
wanted to tell the story.

Matthew


I know that directors select goofy aspect ratios for their own
egocentric artistic purposes. I have never met ANYONE in my
entire life that was not annoyed by them, except for several
in this newsgroup.

If you ever watch a "behind the scenes" of a Motion Picture, the Video
Cameras (no more Film, all Digital now) have 4:3 screens/monitors with taped
off areas for Wide Screen.

It is GOOD to see someone else write about widescreen (2.35:1) and HDTV's
annoying 1.78:1 format. We are all victims of SONY and NHK's HDTV creation
back in the 80s. If we are going to accept - we will have to accept! - how
HDTV worked out, and Hollywood continues to make 2.35:1 films initially for
the theater, Hollywood should consider keeping the main part of their
imagery in the center 2/3 of their 2.35:1 format. For some of us, a 2x zoom
works fine provided that the zoom icon turns off (which for many players,
including Sony) do not.

The writer is correct noting lose of quality in the zoom mode particularly
when viewing large screens. This may be less of a problem as we eventually
move over to BluRay and HD-DVD. For my office 32" LCD, the 2x zoom mode is
fine.


"James Egan" wrote in message
. ..
I just got my new Samsung 61" DLP TV. I won't be getting my
DirecTV hardware upgraded for another two weeks, so I connected
the existing standard def equipment, and also a new XBox 360
HD-DVD player. I played the HD movie "Troy" a bit, just to
see the picture. I was amazed that with the letterbox, only
about 1/2 the screen was used for the actual picture. I was
able to "zoom" the picture some, but you loose quality then.
I thought that with the rectangular shaped TV's that the picture
would use the entire screen?

Also, I tried playing a James Taylor HD-DVD, and it hung
repeatedly. I had read about this problem in the reviews
of this movie in a review, but chalked it up to an
inexperienced user.


Overall though, I'm very happy and amazed by the picture!

BTW - this is one reason why Runco's 2.35:1 projector is so popular with the
deep-pocket buyers!


"WGD" wrote in message
news:[email protected]
It is GOOD to see someone else write about widescreen (2.35:1) and HDTV's
annoying 1.78:1 format. We are all victims of SONY and NHK's HDTV
creation back in the 80s. If we are going to accept - we will have to
accept! - how HDTV worked out, and Hollywood continues to make 2.35:1
films initially for the theater, Hollywood should consider keeping the
main part of their imagery in the center 2/3 of their 2.35:1 format. For
some of us, a 2x zoom works fine provided that the zoom icon turns off
(which for many players, including Sony) do not.

The writer is correct noting lose of quality in the zoom mode particularly
when viewing large screens. This may be less of a problem as we
eventually move over to BluRay and HD-DVD. For my office 32" LCD, the 2x
zoom mode is fine.


"James Egan" wrote in message
. ..
I just got my new Samsung 61" DLP TV. I won't be getting my
DirecTV hardware upgraded for another two weeks, so I connected
the existing standard def equipment, and also a new XBox 360
HD-DVD player. I played the HD movie "Troy" a bit, just to
see the picture. I was amazed that with the letterbox, only
about 1/2 the screen was used for the actual picture. I was
able to "zoom" the picture some, but you loose quality then.
I thought that with the rectangular shaped TV's that the picture
would use the entire screen?

Also, I tried playing a James Taylor HD-DVD, and it hung
repeatedly. I had read about this problem in the reviews
of this movie in a review, but chalked it up to an
inexperienced user.


Overall though, I'm very happy and amazed by the picture!

In article [email protected],
"WGD" wrote:

The writer is correct noting lose of quality in the zoom mode particularly
when viewing large screens. This may be less of a problem as we eventually
move over to BluRay and HD-DVD. For my office 32" LCD, the 2x zoom mode is
fine.

What is it about the words "lose", "loose", and "loss" that makes it so
difficult for people to get it right?

--
Tom Stiller

PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3
7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF

On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 08:03:00 -0400, Tom Stiller wrote:

In article [email protected],
"WGD" wrote:

The writer is correct noting lose of quality in the zoom mode particularly
when viewing large screens. This may be less of a problem as we eventually
move over to BluRay and HD-DVD. For my office 32" LCD, the 2x zoom mode is
fine.

What is it about the words "lose", "loose", and "loss" that makes it so
difficult for people to get it right?


You loose me.

(I couldn't resist)

On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 18:38:19 -0400, Matthew L. Martin wrote:

James Egan wrote:


I know that directors select goofy aspect ratios for their own
egocentric artistic purposes. I have never met ANYONE in my
entire life that was not annoyed by them, except for several
in this newsgroup.


James,

OK. Now we know what you are doing.

The rest,

Please stop feeding the troll.

Matthew


Whatever you are thinking, you are way off base.

On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 23:10:37 -0400, Guest wrote:

You wasted your with this bull**** question.


Obviously not dip-****. Just look at the other
responses in the thread. We're having an intelligent
adult conversation, unlike you.

**** off Guest.

On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 16:10:24 -0400, James Egan
wrote:

On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 08:27:51 -0700, Richard C. wrote:
=========================
Many movies are 2.35:1/2.40:1.
They will be letterboxed even on a 16:9 (1.78:1) set.
There is nothing wrong with that.
It is a wonderful thing!
Besides, that still uses about 75% of the screen (which is more than half).
Zooming or worrying about black bars is a fools game.
==========================


I think directors think that letterbox is wonderful, and everyone
that watches their movies doesn't. g

Some of them are REALLY ridiculous. The movie Troy looked like
I was loosing 40-50% of the picture. The good thing is on a
61" set, the picture is really large to begin with!


(Retrying one more time, without the ASCII art.)


I too would like to use my whole HD screen for every movie I watch. I
would love it if every movie ever shot had been in the same aspect
ratio -- whatever that ratio happened to be.

I actually don't think there would be much artistic loss if every
movie ever shot were shot at, say, 16x9. Gone with the Wind was
narrower, Lawrence of Arabia was wider, but they both seemed to convey
their "epic" scope.

Unfortunately, that's not what we're stuck with today. We've got this
library of movies and TV shows that contain (mostly) 1.33:1, 1.66:1,
1.78:1, and 2.35:1.

Given the current situation, I can't see a much better solution than
to just make TV screens somewhere in the middle and accept some black
bars -- either on the sides (for the 1.33:1 movies and shows) or on
the top & bottom (for the 2.35:1) movies and shows.

By my calculations, 2.35:1 is about 16:6.8. So when you letterbox it
for a 16:9 screen, you're filling 6.8 of those 9 height units with
picture, filling about 75.6% of the height of your TV.

The bars at the top and bottom of your TV screen should each be a
little less than 12.5% of the height of your screen. Something like
this:

http://www.pembers.freeserve.co.uk/T...35-100-L16.gif


Again, I personally wouldn't mind if every movie shot from now till
the end of time were 16x9.