Confused about 16:9 / Wide Screen

[sommert]

I finally took the plunge and bought myself a Samsung 50” HP-S5053 Plasma. I love it so far. However, I am a bit confused about the display settings and aspect ratios.

When you power up some DVDs the menu sometimes will give an option to play in full screen or wide screen. I used the TOP GUN DVD to test this out. Thinking wide screen was the logical choice (since I now have a wide screen TV) I picked that and started the movie. It was wide all right, but it did not populate the entire screen. I still had empty space on the top and bottom.

If I went back and played the full screen version it was fine.


The Samsung also has a few display settings: I keep it on 16:9

16:9
Zoom 1
Zoom 2
4:3

Zoom1 looks like it simply stretches the picture vertically in the event there is empty space.

So, I guess my question is what aspect ratio should the TV be as a default and when should you have to mess with the zoom options and such?

 

[MDS]

A 16:9 widescreen TV has an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 (16 divided by 9). Many movies however were filmed at a wider aspect ratio of 1.85:1 or 2.35:1. When the aspect ratio of the film is greater than the aspect ratio of the screen, you will get small black bars at the top and bottom.

The various Zoom modes of a TV stretch an image in different ways to fill the entire screen. They are named differently from TV to TV but most offer zoom modes that stretch horizontally only, vertically only, or both. If you really dislike the black bars you can use a stretch mode to fill the screen but it is almost always better to view in widescreen so that you see the entire image as filmed.

 

[Audioholics]

This is an article I wrote on the topic:

http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/specsformats/widescreenletterboxpanscan.php

 

[BMXTRIX]

...and this is one that I put together with some visuals to help you understand why you want those black bars...

http://www.avintegrated.com/aspect_ratios.html

1. You want your TV set to 16:9
2. Go into your DVD player setup menus (without a DVD disc in it!) and setup the DVD player so that it knows it is connected to a 16:9 display.
3. Always get Widescreen DVDs but look at the back of the disc to see what aspect ratio it is presented in. Almost all current major releases are 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

 

[sommert]

thanks

I appreciate the quick and useful information.