Can I change native 2.35:1 format pictures to fit my 1.78:1 screen?

[supervij]

The black bars never bothered me, cos I don't think of them as black bars. To me, they're just unused portion of my screen, which is a small con in relation to the huge pro of seeing the picture as it was supposed to be viewed.

I tried watching Pulp Fiction in full screen (back in the days of VHS) and it was just stupid-looking compared to its wide screen. I also remember seeing a full screen DVD of Star Trek: First Contact playing at a comic book storem and it too looked ridiculous. Both movies in full screen looked like some amateur director with absolutely no experience had directed them. Compositionally, everything seemed wrong -- I'd see one person and the nose of another person talking on screen, instead of seeing two people talking on screen, or I'd see a group of people looking at something, instead of seeing both the group of people AND the thing they were looking at.

Full screen sucks.

But that's just my opinion.

cheers,
supervij

 

[mjhamre]

thanks AVRat

I did a bit more searching on my own and the thing that I was trying to get was Constant Height, there is a whole forum over on AVS about it. The way I described is called zooming and is not recommended for DVD because you will be filling the screen with only (cant do the math now) 358 lines or something like that. Also, every time you switch between a 16:9 and 2.35 movie you need to re-zoom and focus your projector. Some people like it with the new HD formats and have gotten good at switching back and forth, but it still takes a minute. There is a whole industry of video scalars and lenses so that all 480p lines are used on a 2.35 screen, but I was thinking of 1080p with no scaling at all... I'm going to be setting up a system next year, but probably will wind up watching enough 16:9 content that a 16:9 screen makes the most sense.