After setting up my HD DVD Player last night and applying ALL the updates available, I then slipped in the King Kong DVD. The picture was looking good on both 1080i and 720p so not sure which to keep. Anyway... the point of my thread is the huge size f the black top and bottom letter box that disappointed me more than anything. It's certainly larger than what I usually see/have on my other applications. Can anyone advise me whether it's the same for them? Maybe it's just King Kong? Maybe not? Is it a setting I need to tweak?
Arent some of the HD DVDs made in 2.4 or even 2.5 aspect ratio (while normal cinemascope being 2.35) ? This would make the black bars bigger. I dont have an HDDVD player, so dont know for sure.
It's to do with the ratio that the film is displayed in. 1.85:1 will give you fullscreen on a widescreen TV and any thing above that such as 2.35:1 for King Kong or the 2.4:1 of Superman Returns will give you the black bars. The higher the first number of the ration the bigger the bars will be. Nothing you can really do about it unless your TV offers a zoom function which will allow you to get rid of the bars but lose some of the picture from the left and right of the screen. Personally I don't mind the bars as it means that you're seeing the film uncropped and as it was intended.
I have King Kong, Superman Returns, Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire., and all three Mission Impossible films and all of them have the same black borders at the top and bottom. King Kong is in 2:35:1 and the others are in 2:4:1. This is the correct ratio as they were originally intended to be seen. Widescreen TV's unfortunately aren't wide enough to show it fullscreen. Also the DVD menu's on all of the above disks (except KK) appear within these black borders when activated so don't encroach onto the picture which also suggests these borders are meant to be there and will be there on future releases I think.
http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=439488 http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=439030
I daresay youre used to black bars whose size is impacted by overscanning - in the case however of hd-dvd, its very unlikely that you are getting much (if indeed any at all) overscanning - to summarise, you were previously losing more picture.
Wow, I thought it was only the American site that people asked this. No offense though, reasonable enough question - I'm just surprised that you've not seen letterboxed movies before. If you have your 360 connected through VGA, that means the TV won't be doing any overscanning so slightly more of the black bars (and more of the picture) will be visible.
Me too - I would have thought everyone and their mother was used to the letterboxing of films by now. You'd be hard pressed to have a collection of DVD's that isn't dominated by letterboxed films surely?
Ahem Steve-L, Lyris & Bald Monkey if you read my post properly you'd be fully aware that my point was why are they so large!! I know all about letter boxalready and no I am English Thanks to you other guys who do know what I as going on about. Oh, and I'm using component cables. My plamsa/Sony DVD player always gives me little black lines top and bottom as I desire to see the WHOLE movie (not stretched). My question was anyone know why they are so much bigger through the Xbox360 HD DVD player. Wasn't that unreasonable question was it?
Nope, not at all, in fact I was referring to other threads that were asking "Why are the bars there at all", not yours. The post did remind me of the near-daily questions about 2.35:1 movies I see on AVSForum - "I thought this was HD!" - so forgive me if I came across as a little snappy
Well if you are seeing a difference then no it isn't - but I'm not seeing any difference at all. I've always seen large black borders on Cinemascope type films on SD-DVD and they don't appear to me, to be any bigger on HD-DVD's.
Hey no worries guys and thanks for your comments. Maybe I'll take some shots (fotos) and show you what I mean as there is a slight difference between the Sony DVD Player and the normal Xbox drive to that of what I am getting/seeing from the Xbox HD DVD Player.