Black bands and Widescreen TV

[norcaldiver]

So I bought a widescreen TV and all is cool, but now that movies are comming out in widescreen, I'm starting to notice an irritating thing.
You all know how you get the black bands on top and bottom of a regular TV when you watch a widescreen (WS) movie....but I get them on my WS TV also. I've tried zoom, cinema wide, full, normal wide...all the settings, but I still get the bands. They vary in size depending on what mode, but they are STILL THERE! I want the whole screen filled...that why I got a WS TV.

Anyone have any input on this?

 

[chrpai]

So I bought a widescreen TV and all is cool, but now that movies are comming out in widescreen, I'm starting to notice an irritating thing.
You all know how you get the black bands on top and bottom of a regular TV when you watch a widescreen (WS) movie....but I get them on my WS TV also. I've tried zoom, cinema wide, full, normal wide...all the settings, but I still get the bands. They vary in size depending on what mode, but they are STILL THERE! I want the whole screen filled...that why I got a WS TV.

Anyone have any input on this?

A HighDef Widescreen TV has an aspect ration of 16:9 aka 1.78:1. Thats 1.78 width per 1 inch of height. Some movies are filmed by the director to have an even WIDER aspect ration such as 1.85:1 or 2.35:1. These movies will still have black bars on wide screen TV's but the good news is the bars are much smaller then they would have been on a 4:3 television.

I'll try to leave math out of this..... Take a DVD player for example. If you have an anamorphic DVD with a 1.78:1 aspect ratio and play it on a 4:3 television you lose alot of resolution because many of the scan lines have to be used to display the black bars. However if you play that DVD on a 16:9 TV you don't lose any of your scan lines to display those blackbars.

Same thing applies to movies with wider aspect rations.

Just sit back and enjoy the show. The fact is there is no right or wrong aspect ratio. The DIR way to watch a movie is in whatever aspect ratio the director chose. Never compromise with 'full screen' or 'pan and crop' crap where you loose parts of the scene to get it to "fit" your TV.

For example the old movie Key Largo was filmed in 4:3. That means you'll have black bars on the left and right of the movie to preserve a 4:3 area in the middle. Don't worry about the bars, just watch the movie!!

I got a very sweet system a couple of years ago and I've never looked back.

 

[boomx5]

depending on your new toy and the movie your watching. I have a Mitsubishi 65' widescreen and some of my movies still have a bar on top and on bottom. The good thing is the teevee is black, so if I turn off all the lights and watch movies at night, you don't notice the bars. Oh, and make sure to buy all you movies in widescreen.

 

[norcaldiver]

Yeah, it's great if I turn the lights off and I'd rather watch WS than normal, but my point is that the TV is 16:9 and the movies I buy SAY 16:9, so it there shouldn't be any black bands. It's like reading the small print. Like what they do is this...they take the original, and put the black bands so that if you watch the WS version on a 4:3 TV, the visual part is 16:9 due to the black bands. SO, it's really 4:3. Now when I put that on my 16:9, it fills the screen but I still get that inch or so of black on the top and bottom...it's not a truely WS edition of the movie, but rather more of an addapted WS version. It just tourques me that they just can't give me what they say they're giving me......

 

[Genesis]

WARNING:

If that TV has TUBES (its a projection system or regular large tube TV) or is a PLASMA screen be aware that long duration viewing with the "black bands" in the same place will burn the display.

Once that happens it is PERMANENT.

The only sets that are immune to this are the DLP and LCD systems. ALL OTHERS are subject to it. The salesdroids will NOT tell you this up front (that your rather expensive toy will shortly start to degrade.)

Virtually all WS TVs have this problem within 2-5 years. The tubes are extremely expensive to get replaced (not worth it) and the plasma display is non-repairable - its a throw-away once this happens.

If you have a WS TV, watching "normal" TV on it (without putting it in "expand" mode and having the tops and bottoms of bodies cut off) is hazardous to the service life of your set.

I have a MITS HD set that is about 4 years old, it has a "off-gray" banding in 4:3 mode that is specifically designed to avoid this damage, I did my damndest to avoid it as well - it still happened, as my kid likes cartoons.

 

[Uncle Pug]

Duct Tape.
Or for an adjustable fix:
Velcro & card board.

 

[chrpai]

Genesis-

First you don't set the TV to "torch mode". Also when I watch 4:3 TV I get grey bars not black bars. The level of grey is an average intensity so that the wear is even.

I watched letter boxed movies on my old 27" for 10 years and never had screen burn.

Anyone who is complaining about this "problem" doesn't understand video. Your TV has a fixed shape. Movies don't. So unless you want to butcher the movie to fit the TV not all content will ever fit. Movie theaters solve this problem by drawing the curtains in and back. ( Duct tape as Pugs says)

 

[Genesis]

Genesis-
First you don't set the TV to "torch mode". Also when I watch 4:3 TV I get grey bars not black bars. The level of grey is an average intensity so that the wear is even.

No its not. How long 'ya had that TV Chrpai? You're in for a sssssuuuuuurrrrppprrriiissseeee!

("Torch mode" is not required to do harm.... trust me on this.)

I watched letter boxed movies on my old 27" for 10 years and never had screen burn.

Your old 27" TV ran about 1/10th the phosphor output level your projection set does. I had one of those 27" sets too (a Philips) and never had trouble with it. Your projection system is running the same brightness as your 27" TV, but doing so with an actual projection area of about 1/10th of the screen size (that is, an area of 1/10th of the screen's in square inches is being used to produce ALL the light you see on the screen.)

While you may think your "gray bars" are "average", in truth the "average" program does not exist. However, the "average" bars will age the phosphor at exactly the average rate, while the rest of the screen will not - in fact, it will age at quite a bit LESS than the "average" rate.

In 2-5 years, depending on how much you use that set, you will see when watching a 16:9 film that a white screen (e.g. a solid background, such as a skiier on a slope) has a color change on the sides!

 

[chrpai]

No its not. How long 'ya had that TV Chrpai? You're in for a sssssuuuuuurrrrppprrriiissseeee!

When did I ever say I had a projection system? I have a directview. The RCA F38310 38" 1080I Widescreen with integrated HD DirecTV OTA 8VSB tuner. BTW I've had it for over 3 years now and it still looks as good as the day I bought it.

I prefer a crisp sharp image of a conventional tube over the size and lackluster performance of a projection tv.

Trust me dude, I know this stuff.

 

[Genesis]

When did I ever say I had a projection system? I have a directview. The RCA F38310 38" 1080I Widescreen with integrated HD DirecTV OTA 8VSB tuner. BTW I've had it for over 3 years now and it still looks as good as the day I bought it.

Trust me dude, I know this ****.

They don't make 65" direct-view tubes

A GOOD projection (or direct-view) system has no motion artifact problems. LCDs and DLP systems do. A Plasma doesn't, but a good projection tube system blows a plasma system away in terms of actual resolution.