Do you know people that stretch movies to fit their whole screen?

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: MrPickins
I stretch every 4:3 source to 16:9 on my hdtv. I have the screen real estate, why let it go to waste?

After a bit you don't notice it much anyway...

I hate this more than every other thing that can be wrong with a movie.

 

[KoolDrew]

Originally posted by: Aflac
The stretched aspect ratio makes me nuts.

 

[Eeezee]

I remember when I first got my widescreen monitor, I also bought a WoW account and was playing for a few minutes in windowed mode with the game stretched to 16:9 on 1280x1024 resolution. I thought for some reason all of the characters were just really fat I fixed it to a 1280x768 resolution (whew)

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: oogabooga

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
I can hardly stand watching movies at all at most people's houses now even if aspect ratio is right

is this your way of declining my invitation to come over and watch movies with me on my 14in laptop screen with my laptop speakers?

Yes, yes it is.

 

[DrPizza]

When we purchased our television, we went 4:3 because most programming on tv was 4:3. Any movies I buy, I get the widescreen version. I have a large enough screen that the black bars at the top and the bottom don't bother me. I can't stand to watch something that the aspect ratio is wrong on.

 

[Chiropteran]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Some people I know locally think I'm really really weird for not liking movie theaters. Maybe I've not visited the ones that inject heroin automatically, but I just don't care for theaters. No pause/rewind, there's no private bathroom, only public restrooms, the food is expensive, it's really goddamn loud, there are noisy idiots in the audience, the chairs usually suck, and they've got the theater jam-packed with seats to maximize profits, at the expense of personal space. Plus, the low framerate (23.976fps) of movies is really noticeable on a big screen, especially on CG effects where the makers decided not to use motion-blur effects.

What you see as drawbacks I see as benefits.

No pause/rewind - Thank god. I hate it when movies get interrupted every 10 minutes.

No bathroom- I go before the movie starts. Interruptions are bad.

Food expensive- I got to a movie to watch the movie, not eat junk.

Loud- Pure awesomeness.

Noisy idiots- This is one of the few I agree with you on, fortunately they aren't that common around here.

Chairs- The newer theaters are pretty nice.

Packed- Not really a fair complaint. It's only packed if you are going to see a movie on opening night or shortly after- which you can't do for a movie you are watching at home. If you wait a few weeks to avoid the crowds, you are still seeing the movie long before it'll ever be available to see at home legally.

Frame rate- You realize DVDs have the exact same frame rate as movies in the theater? Complaining that it is more noticeable on the movie screen is like complaining about getting a nicer monitor or projector.

 

[jjones]

I don't even notice the black bars. Stretching I would notice, to the detriment of my viewing experience.

 

[Captante]

Occasionally I'll stretch an animated movie or SDTV program which seems to look fine on my Toshiba LCD, but a big part of this is the aspect-ratio control on my screen has an option which only stretchs the outer edges of the picture ... I can't stand it when people stretch the whole thing.

 

[Q]

Originally posted by: theprodigalrebel
Around a month back, I was watching Garden State (a 2.40:1 movie) on my 4:3 monitor. This guy (friend's cousin) was at my place and he asked me, "Why do you use WMP? GOM Player is better." I asked him, "Why is that? MPC/WMP+ffdshow is the geek-standard."

He said, "GOM has this feature that lets you stretch the image to fill the whole screen so you don't get these black bars." This is the point where I am perplexed. I told him ffdshow allowed me to do the same and just for kicks, scaled the image to my monitor's aspect.

I asked him, "Is this right?" He says, "Yeah."

He honestly saw nothing wrong with the image.

Ed: Fixed tense.

I'm a nerd and I had no idea what you were saying. I don't suggest showing this post to any ladies.

 

[spidey07]

Just about everybody that gets their first wide screen TV will do this until somebody tells them not to and the reasons why.

Every friend of mine that wants to show off their TV they are constantly fiddling with stretch modes in an effort to "fill the screen" with different aspect ratios/source. They even stretch HD content.

 

[Sureshot324]

The solution is just get a projector

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Sureshot324
The solution is just get a projector

They'd then be stretching it, only then they'd be trying to get rid of the "grey bars". It's not filling the screen no matter what and they'd be stretching it.

 

[tfinch2]

I stretch SD content. Black bars are annoying, plus it looks like shit anyway.

 

[Number1]

OK I have a 42 in 16:9 plasma 1080i TV
I like to rent movies standard size because it fills the screen.
I avoid the widescreen version like a plague because I can't stand those horizontall black bars.

Are standard size movies automaticaly stretched by my hardware? If it is I can't tell. The picture looks fine to me.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Number1
OK I have a 42 in 16:9 plasma 1080i TV
I like to rent movies standard size because it fills the screen.
I avoid the widescreen version like a plague because I can't stand those horizontall black bars.

Are standard size movies automaticaly stretched by my hardware? If it is I can't tell. The picture looks fine to me.

Please tell me you're joking.

 

[Number1]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Number1
OK I have a 42 in 16:9 plasma 1080i TV
I like to rent movies standard size because it fills the screen.
I avoid the widescreen version like a plague because I can't stand those horizontall black bars.

Are standard size movies automaticaly stretched by my hardware? If it is I can't tell. The picture looks fine to me.

Please tell me you're joking.

What the F are you talking about?

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: Number1

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Number1
OK I have a 42 in 16:9 plasma 1080i TV
I like to rent movies standard size because it fills the screen.
I avoid the widescreen version like a plague because I can't stand those horizontall black bars.

Are standard size movies automaticaly stretched by my hardware? If it is I can't tell. The picture looks fine to me.

Please tell me you're joking.

What the F are you talking about?

Well, you watch movies completely wrong...

 

[Bill Brasky]

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie

Originally posted by: Number1

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Number1
OK I have a 42 in 16:9 plasma 1080i TV
I like to rent movies standard size because it fills the screen.
I avoid the widescreen version like a plague because I can't stand those horizontall black bars.

Are standard size movies automaticaly stretched by my hardware? If it is I can't tell. The picture looks fine to me.

Please tell me you're joking.

What the F are you talking about?

You're doing it wrong...

fixered

 

[theprodigalrebel]

Originally posted by: Quintox

Originally posted by: theprodigalrebel
..postectomy..

I'm a nerd and I had no idea what you were saying. I don't suggest showing this post to any ladies.

The correct way
You are doing it wrong!

(Didn't capture the exact same frame but you get the idea)

 

[Bateluer]

My mom did this when I was there last year, very annoying. Though she didn't object when I changed it to the correct aspect ratio.

 

[CZroe]

Originally posted by: Number1

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Number1
OK I have a 42 in 16:9 plasma 1080i TV
I like to rent movies standard size because it fills the screen.
I avoid the widescreen version like a plague because I can't stand those horizontall black bars.

Are standard size movies automaticaly stretched by my hardware? If it is I can't tell. The picture looks fine to me.

Please tell me you're joking.

What the F are you talking about?

Theatrical content can be in 16:9 or wider than 16:9 aspect ratios (like Sony CinemaScope). This is referred to as "OAR." When you buy the widescreen version, you are either getting 16:9, which will fill your screen nicely, or you are getting a wider aspect enclosed within 16:9 to maintain the OAR. Wither way, if you buy 4:3 movies and stretch to 16:9, you are BUTCHERING far more than the average idiot who would zoom on the OAR to fill the screen.

When you say that you buy "standard/Full-screen" instead of "Widescreen/OAR" you are buying for the WRONG standard. 4:3 is no longer "standard" for theatrical movies (Academy Standard). You are purposely mis-matching your screen with the movie. You movies suffer, so ignorance is NOT bliss. If you are buying HD movies, like BD and HD-DVD, there should no longer be "standard" and "wide" versions, because "standard" is NO LONGER standard.

Stanley Kubrick preferred academy aspect, and shot his films intended for that as the OAR, though the theatrical cuts were framed as wide within academy frame. In Top Gun, Tom Cruise's motorcycle fist-pumping scene had his fist and most of his body chopped off in the theater and the frame was "opened up" for 4:3 release (rather than Panned and Scanned). These situations confuse the whole OAR vs. theatrical aspect debate, but one thing is inarguable: If you have a widescreen TV, you have no business buying "standard" 4:3 content. You are throwing your money away.

If you still have bars on a widescreen DVD, your DVD player is probably not set correctly. It is shrinking the movie and adding the bars which are making it lower than standard def. You will actually get increased resolution by correcting the setting. Non-anamorphic widescreen DVDs are less common, but some do exist. These were sloppily encoded DVDs that actually record the black bars inside a 4:3 image. The only way to remove those is to zoom in to blow up the lower detail picture or demand a proper widescreen release. Though this is mostly a problem with very old widescreen DVD titles, HD formats are finally giving us that "proper" release for some movies (most, like "The Big Lebowski," got "double dip" DVD releases that fixed it).

Edit: And, yes, most plasma HDTVs stretch 4:3 content by default to avoid burn-in. You have an aspect button that can correct most SD content, thogh HD content is supposed to be 16:9 (4:3 content will be "pillarboxed" by the output device). If you had an LCD, you should always use the setting to acheive OAR. Zoom on letterboxed SD programming like NatGeo or Discovery on SD cable, set 4:3 for "full screen" SD TV shows, fill at 16:9 for HDTV broadcasts and HD sources (Blu-Ray disc, XBOX 360, HTPC, etc).

 

[theprodigalrebel]

Originally posted by: Number1
OK I have a 42 in 16:9 plasma 1080i TV
I like to rent movies standard size because it fills the screen.
I avoid the widescreen version like a plague because I can't stand those horizontall black bars.

Are standard size movies automaticaly stretched by my hardware? If it is I can't tell. The picture looks fine to me.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Movies come in two versions: Widescreen and Full-Screen (meant for older TVs).

In America (NTSC), Widescreen DVDs have a resolution of 720x480 which on playback get scaled (through this thing called an anamorphic process) to 852x480. 852x480, if you do the math, is 16:9 (close). On a widescreen TV, if the movie you are watching has a Source AR of 1.77:1 (eg. Requiem for a Dream), you wont' get any bars. If it was shot at 1.85:1 (eg. Atonement), you will get miniscule bars. If it was shot at 2.35:1 (eg. Pulp Fiction), you will get bigger black bars. If it was shot at 2.40:1 (eg. The Simpsons Movie), you will get even bigger bars. Watching a 1.33:1 movie/TV show would get you vertical bars on the sides of the image.

If you get a standard fullscreen DVD, you will be limited to 720x480 and would lose a fair bit of resolution. For eg., a 1.77:1 movie would result in 852x480 pixels on the anamorphic-enhanced widescreen version.

The same movie on a standard fullscreen DVD could employ one of two techniques:
1) Chop off the sides to fill the whole frame (called Pan-and-Scan)
2) Letterbox it so you get a 720x406 image, preserving the original AR but losing some resolution.

Ed: Fixed typo. They keys are like right next to each other.

 

[CZroe]

1.33:1 will get you vertical bars on the side.

If anyone cares, almost the only theatrical content framed at 16:9 these days are the summer special effects block-busters (you know, like Spiderman 3). It saves on render and post-production times for the CGI-heavy sequences.

 

[Number1]

Originally posted by: Zaitsev

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie

Originally posted by: Number1

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Number1
OK I have a 42 in 16:9 plasma 1080i TV
I like to rent movies standard size because it fills the screen.
I avoid the widescreen version like a plague because I can't stand those horizontall black bars.

Are standard size movies automaticaly stretched by my hardware? If it is I can't tell. The picture looks fine to me.

Please tell me you're joking.

What the F are you talking about?

You're doing it wrong...

fixered

I am doing my movies wrong? OK
My experience with my TV is like this:

HD Cable TV 16:9 ratio looks stunning

Regular cable TV 4:3 looks awfull, everybody ends up with 10 feet wide shoulders. I don't watch it much.

DVD wide screen: looks OK, I hate the black bars.

DVD regular size: looks good, especialy cartoons like rattatouille, Ice age etc. I see no distortion like on the TV 4:3 broadcast.

I assume regular movie size equal 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratio? Correct me if I am wrong.

 

[theprodigalrebel]

LOL, fixed the error. You know what I meant though, eh?