Letterbox format?

[pauls898]

I have a Sony RDR-HXD710 PVR and while dubbing a standard 16:9 full screen program recorded from BBC1 to a DVD -R in LP mode the result playback on DVD seems to be in Letterbox mode? The recorder has croped the top and bottom off the picture? Why?

If I dub to a DVD -RW in HQ mode and only fit an hour on one 4.7GB DVD I get full screen, but this is a bit of a waste of disc only puting 1 hour on a disc. When I compress 4 hours of footage ie going from HQ to LP it crops the picture? is this how it saves data by croping the image or am I missing something here

[LV426]

Without actually seeing what you described (and I don't have this exact machine) - so this is educated guesswork:

I think you're encountering an obscure part of the DVD standard.

Your recorder, in order to compress the data down to a size that will fit, actually reduces the definition (number of pixels) in the image. Down from 720x576 to (probably) 352x576. This is still within the DVD standard.

However, I believe it's NOT within the DVD standard for a true widescreen (16x9) signal to be encoded at anything less than full resolution. So, I suspect your recorder is reformatting your video to letterbox 4x3 format at 352x576 (which is within the standard).

My guess is, it isn't actually cropping; you aren't actually losing anything. It's just being letterboxed.

This is really a DVD recorder question, so I'm moving the thread, in case there is more knowledge over there....