16:9 / 4:3 clarifications Sky & Pany 75

[zappo]

Can anyone explain more about the technical differences between 16:9 and 4:3 (other than the ratio) and how best to use them for burning DVD's.

At the moment I have a 4:3 CRT TV but I am getting an LCD soon.

I have a Sky Plus box that has three modes 16:9, 4:3 and 4:3L ( I assume the L is for letterbox).

On Sky the 4:3 looks zoomed in and you lose some of the picture, 16:9 had big black borders top and bottom and 4:3L seems fine.

The question is what settings should I use on the DVD, some people say the source is important as this is what you will always have and so say set it to record in 16:9 in preparation for the widescreen TV. Others say that The Pany 75 records everything in 4:3 and just adapts it to 16:9 when requested.

The Pany manual has a 16:9 setting just to confuse things and it also does not record the 16:9 flag in high speed.

So what is the best setting for Sky+ and the Pany?

Is it the case that everything is in 4:3 and just stretched as required? Sometimes it looks as if the picture ha sbeen shrunk twice.

[stevelup]

Hi

If you are recording, you should always have the Sky+ box set to 16:9 otherwise you are losing quality.

If you have your Sky+ box set to 4:3, It will zoom any 16:9 material - thus chopping the left and right sides off - detail which will be impossible to recover at a later date.

If you have your Sky+ box set to Letterbox, the Sky box inserts black bars top and bottom on 16:9 broadcasts, thus you lose resolution as you are recording those black bars.

Does your TV not support 16:9 switching even though it's a 4:3 display? Many do. You will definitely see an improvement in brightness and sharpness if you do this although a lot of 4:3 displays show a white line at the top of the image when in 16:9 compress mode.

Regards,

Steve

[zappo]

This is what I am trying to find out, but I need to understand the technical side of things, I can see when it zooms in and when it adds black bars, the problem is that the Sky+ box has 6 settings, 3 under "picture format" and 3 under "second location picture format" (whatever that is). So you can set these to 4:3, 16:9 or 4:3L.

Thus far 4:3L has given the best picture for our current TV but I am mindful that when we change it any recordings we make may be distorted.

How is it that the Sky box has recorded them to it's hard disk and yet I can output them in any of the above formats? This seems to support the comment made on these forums about everything being recorded 4:3 and then adapted as required.

Then you get channels that are specifically in wide screen, I remember when News24 went widescreen.

So we have the original signal and it's 16:9 or 4:3 setting (which I have no control over)

We have the Sky box which lets me change it at will even for a recorded program.

Then we have the Pany DVD recorder which has a setting for 4:3 video and says in the manual

"use this setting if you want to replay videos in 4:3 format on the connected television set in 16:9 format." which it says "picture is output in 16:9 with side panels". Panels on top and bottom, panels on the side, I don't want any Bdy panels.

Then you have the issue that if you have the panasonic DVD recorder set to Fast Dub it does not send the widescreen flag. If it is a flag then is it really just a stretched picture?

How is it that Sky can just record the thing to hard disk and give me settings, how come the DVD can't do the same (or can it).

You seem to be suggested that the black bars are recorded to the HDD/DVD so that when the picture is played on a 16:9 widescreen it will not use the full screen and the black bars will remain?

Yet when I set Sky to 16:9 it seems as if it has been applied twice, the bars are massive on my current TV and the picture is tiny as if the black bars have been applied twice.

If this is the case how can I be certain that the DVD is recording a picture that will play using as much of the resolution as possible? (I am not getting into the HDMI issue of mismatched 720/768 or 1080/1024 resolution, I will save that for another thread.)

It seems that the only way to do this is to put the DVD on record and play clips from the same program on Sky Plus with each setting, then burn this to a DVD and play it in a shop. Even then I imagine the TV has it's own 16:9 setting which would affect each change on the skyplus.

Doh with so many permutations on each device is it any wonder that this is confusing?

So my first recorded DVD should be called permutations, it will be the intro to the Sopranos recorded again and again in different settings!

How does the ASPECT improve in brightness and sharpness and WHAT is 16:9 compress mode.

[stevelup]

Hi

A Sky+ box is the exception to the rule in that it records the raw datastream and decodes it on the fly when you play back. Thus you can change the playback mode on the fly.

For recording to DVD, you definitely need to have your Sky+ box output 16:9. That way no cropping / stretching / padding is being done.

You are quite right in that all SD devices store the image in a 4:3 format (720x576 pixels), and that the image is squashed into that space before broadcast, then unstretched at playback time.

The key thing is to make sure you are transferring data from your Sky+ box to your DVD recorder in a manner which will not lose you any data. Setting your Sky+ box to output 16:9 is the only way of guaranteeing this.

Seriously, you are overcomplicating things. Just set your Sky+ box to output 16:9 and everything will be rosy!

Regards,

Steve

[RAB67]

Originally Posted by zappo

the panasonic DVD recorder set to Fast Dub it does not send the widescreen flag. .

This doesn't matter when playing back on your widescreen TV - it will stretch it back into 16:9. It it is only an issue when playing back on another dvd in a 4:3 set up, as it won't know to generate those black bars top & bottom.

and WHAT is 16:9 compress mode.

Many modern 4:3 TVs have a widescreen mode that generates the black bars top and bottom that squishes an anamorphic image (tall skinny people) into a letterbox one, so it is in the correct ratio. (also fixes the above problem)