Should we be worried about the future of DVD/widescreen?

OK, here's something that struck me today.

We all know that in the near future, 4x3 broadcasts on TV will end. The logical prediction would be that 16x9 TVs will become the norm. At this point, isn't it a slightly odd idea that all broadcasts and home cinema formats will still be based on the 4x3 ratio? Let me explain...

Even though a DVD may be 'widescreen', all this means is that you are getting a 4x3 image, with the parts that the movie don't fill just left black. To achieve widescreen on your 16x9 set, you must stretch that 4x3 image both horizontally and vertically, until the black bars are forced 'off-screen', so that the area of film that you want to watch matches the shape of your TV (I'm taking a 16x9 pic as an example here). A good analogy would be buying a landscape painting which had been shrunk (I don't know how...with a ray gun!) so that it would fit a square frame. Essentially, the frame would be blank at the top and bottom.

Widescreen TVs would be like magnifying frames. Frames twice the size of the painting, with a magnifying sheet so that the painting appears to fit it. Silly, no?

Why not make a TV which is actuall designed to take advantage of a true w/s image, rather than just blow up a simulated w/s image on a 4x3 frame? In terms of the analogy, why shrink the painting in the first place when you can just buy a frame to fit it in its original size?

What I cam coming to is that in the future, the very near future I predict, home cinema formats will store w/s movies like this:

 ---------------------

|                     |

|                     |

|       Image         |

|                     |

 ---------------------



rather than like this:



 ---------------------

|      blank          | <------wasted info

|---------------------|

|                     |

|         image       |

|                     |

|---------------------|

|      blank          | <------wasted info

 ---------------------



Anamorphic is trying to compensate for

the loss of quality that blowing up entails:



 ---------------------

|---------------------|<---less waste

|                     |

|    vertically       |

|    stretched        |<----more info stored

|      image          |

|                     |

|---------------------|

 ---------------------



However, this seems an absurd compromise,

as though 4x3 (a dying ratio) still rules

the way in which info has to be stored.

Sure, 4x3 could be stored, but why not

like this:



 --------------------------

|    |                |    |

|    |                |    |

|    |                |    |

|    |    4x3 image   |    |<----wasted space

|    |                |    |

|    |                |    |

 --------------------------

OK, sure, you'd get wasted space on either side. But which would you be watching more of, w/s or 4x3? So which would you want higher quality from? Exactly.

So why not make the frames of info w/s (or oblong) in shape so that the picture fills it completely, rather than making those frames 4x3 (or square) and wasting all that space above and below it.

Usin my proposed method would eliminate worry about horizontal loss as well as vertical. No need for anamorphic! Think about how it's done in a cinema:

The screen is 16x9, the picture is 16x9. The pic fits the screen perfectly. A 4x3 pic, such as Blair Witch, is shown in the middle of the screen, leaving the sides blank.

This is how cinemas would be using our current method of home theatre data storage:

The screen is 16x9, the picture is 4x3 with a smaller 16x9 image inside of it. The pic has to be blown up more to fit the screen, resulting in horizontal and vertical resolution loss. The extra blank film at the top and bottom are projected outside of the screen, where they are invisible.

Which one would you rather have? In a perfect world, I'd say the former. But we're not living in a perfect world. DVD is still held back by 4x3 standards, and will always be. This is why I fear that in the not too distant future, a new format will arrive that is much more efficient at storing data, because it stores the image at the correct aspect ratio!

What does everyone think?
Si

P.S. Sorry this was so long

------------------
"I have a bad feeling about this..."

Visit my John Williams website at http://homes.arealcity.com/sithlordsi/


--edited to make the graphics show up correctly

[This message has been edited by Dominik Pfleghaar (edited 02-10-2000).]

OK, sorry about the diagrams. The post automatically got rid of all the spacing I had done, so they've all collapsed like a flan in a cupboard. But you can still get my point without them. Just thought they'd be cool.
Si

[Hendrik]

...thinks: That Boy's been alone too much...

! !

[Chromy]

Have you ever heard of an anamorphic lens for a camera Most 2.35:1 movies shown in theaters are stretched horizontally... Other than that, I don't really understand what you are saying...

Chromy

[Taxi]

Si, I think you have a misconception about how info is stored on a DVD. Not that I'm an expert, but here is what I do know.

It sounds to me like you are making an argument for anamorphic transfers. In other words, you believe that the image should be stored on the medium (in most cases, DVD) without any extra black space, which eats up resolution. Well, this is exactly what is meant when a disc is said to be "anamorphic."

This is why we've all been so adamant about making anamorphic discs the standard, rather than just a feature. Because, as you say, when most of us are looking at 16:9 televisions in the next 10 years or so, we're going to want that extra resolution that anamorphic provides.

If I missed your point (Which I think I did, since you use the term anamorphic, so you must know what it is) then maybe you could try to explain yourself a bit more?

Thanks,

Taxi
DDS#42

[TampaFlyer]

My head's about to explode. I thought this was gonna be a thread about P&S discs.

[This message has been edited by TampaFlyer (edited 02-11-2000).]

What the Hell is he trying to tell us?

It's really hard for me to explain this...I take the point about anamorphic pictures making the best use of the space, but what I'm saying is on a widescreen TV, the picture is still stretched, maybe not vertically but certainly horizontally. Why not make a standard where the pic is stored in widescreen, without black bars, and that extra info can be used to increase the resolution. Then W/S TVs should automatically be able to show that image with no stretching or changing of modes. Of course, this technology doesn't exist, it was mere speculation.
Si

------------------
"I have a bad feeling about this..."

Visit my John Williams website at http://homes.arealcity.com/sithlordsi/

[Hendrik]

...still thinks: That Boy's really been alone too much...

! !

[jb523]

Si, I think I understand what you're saying, but you're missing one point. Encoding the black bars requires almost no space to compress. As an example if you compare an all black image and a picture (with the same total number of pixels) in jpg format, they will have vastly different storage sizes. With this in mind, with non-anamorphic dvds, a 4x3 version of a film and a widescreen version of the same film, the widescreen version will generally look much nicer. Of course if fox lorber did the widescreen, and columbia did the 4x3, that would be a different story.

To address your other point, the idea of the dvd-specification allowing for varying resolutions, is an intriguing one. This would allow great extensibility on the quality of transfers, but since it is impossible to have extensibility on the storage space on the disc itself (without introducing new players), the benefit would be somewhat limited, and considering the additional difficulty of having players deal with presenting images that are stored with varying resolutions and aspect ratios, it would not necessarily be worth the cost.

[Taxi]

Anamorphic discs don't store the black bars. Your player adds then to make it fit your screen. At least I know that's true for 1.85:1 films. I'm not certain about wider ARs, but I'm pretty sure they don't store the black bars either. That is why you get better resolution with anamorphic than you do with non-anamorphic, when viewed on widescreen sets in the proper mode.

Taxi
DDS#42

Thankyou jb! You understand what the hell I'm on about! I'm not really that bothered, just thought I'd find out how confident everyone is about their DVD collection NOT becoming obselete in the next 5 years...

By the way, I have spent too much time on my own recently. It's true! And now it's Valentine's Day, and I feel suicidal.

Si

------------------
"I have a bad feeling about this..."

Visit my John Williams website at http://homes.arealcity.com/sithlordsi/

By the way, the last comment was a joke.
Si

[jb523]

My understanding is that anamorphic dvd's do store the black bars (whatever black bars are required to fill up a 1.77:1 aspect ratio). If you watch a dvd on a pc capable of exploiting anamorphic resolutions, then you will see two black bars, the darker one is being added by the player, and the lighter one being the bars encoded on the disc. So for 1.85, the lighter-colored bars would be very slim, and for 2.35, they would be about as wide as the darker-colored bars.

[Wesly Moore]

I think that jb523 is correct: some letterbox banding is included in the transfer of scope films. I'm sure everybody knows that setting your DVD player for 16:9 anamorphic playback on a 4:3 television results in the "squeezed" image being displayed. If you try this with a 1.85:1 transfer, there will be no (or very thin) visible letterbox banding. If you use a 2.35:1 transfer, the banding will be wider, although still not nearly as wide as on a non-anamorphic disc.

However, I think the storage requirements for these all-black bars which never exhibit any change would be extremely small.

------------------
Wesly Moore
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weslymoore@aol.com

[brian]

1.85:1 anamorphic transfers do not store the black bars. If you have a Toshiba DVD, try zooming in on an anamorphic enhanced dvd, and viola, the bars are gone. Do the same with non anamorphic dvd, and the bars are still there