So I just watched a few movies on Blu Ray, on a 1080p TV that refreshed 
at 120 Hz.

Specifically, "Sleepy Hollow," "Wall-E," and "TCoN: Prince Caspian."

And, my reaction in general was:

YIPPEE!

Seriously, the quality was absolutely astounding!  If I weren't already 
trying to pay down my debt, I would be sorely tempted to go out and get 
a new home theatre today :)

Of course, this brings me to the point of my post... that as nice as the 
added resolution of 1080p is, it didn't do nearly as much for the 
picture as having a 120Hz refresh rate.  The movement is absolutely 
amazing!  I can't wait until video is recorded at this rate natively, 
rather than interpolated by the TV!

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

> So I just watched a few movies on Blu Ray, on a 1080p TV that refreshed at 
> 120 Hz.
>
> Specifically, "Sleepy Hollow," "Wall-E," and "TCoN: Prince Caspian."
>
> And, my reaction in general was:
>
> YIPPEE!

Agreed - I saw a 200 Hz comparison with 50 Hz, the difference was amazing.

> Of course, this brings me to the point of my post... that as nice as the 
> added resolution of 1080p is, it didn't do nearly as much for the picture 
> as having a 120Hz refresh rate.  The movement is absolutely amazing!  I 
> can't wait until video is recorded at this rate natively, rather than 
> interpolated by the TV!

It's all needed because of the way LCD works, it "holds" the pixel colour on 
the screen for the entire length of the frame, rather than the CRT way of 
just providing a burst.  This means that for moving images, whilst your eye 
is tracking the motion, you see a blur rather than a smooth sharp movement. 
This happens even if the response time is zero, but longer response times 
just make matters worse.

You can either fix this problem by doubling up frame-rate or resolution - 
both work equally well, and just need some algorithm to interpolate between 
frames/pixels.

Post a reply to this message

"scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
 interpolated by the TV!
>
> It's all needed because of the way LCD works, it "holds" the pixel colour on
> the screen for the entire length of the frame, rather than the CRT way of
> just providing a burst.  This means that for moving images, whilst your eye
> is tracking the motion, you see a blur rather than a smooth sharp movement.
> This happens even if the response time is zero, but longer response times
> just make matters worse.

That's really interesting, something I never realized. Thanks for opening my
eyes! I do all my computer work on a CRT monitor; same for watching DVDS and TV
(on a digital-but-CRT television.) It makes me wonder which device--LCD or
CRT--is 'better' for viewing things? A big question and topic, to be sure.
Those of us who have been around 'awhile' are used to the 'look' of a CRT as
being a kind of standard; but more and more video enthusiasts are opting for
LCDs. I guess it will get to a point in the not-too-distant-future where some
younger folks will never have seen a CRT display!

KW

Post a reply to this message

On 4/22/2009 12:22 PM, Kenneth wrote:
> That's really interesting, something I never realized. Thanks for opening my
> eyes! I do all my computer work on a CRT monitor; same for watching DVDS and TV
> (on a digital-but-CRT television.) It makes me wonder which device--LCD or
> CRT--is 'better' for viewing things? A big question and topic, to be sure.
> Those of us who have been around 'awhile' are used to the 'look' of a CRT as
> being a kind of standard; but more and more video enthusiasts are opting for
> LCDs. I guess it will get to a point in the not-too-distant-future where some
> younger folks will never have seen a CRT display!

LCDs, or OLEDs if you can afford them, are easier on the eyes than CRTs, 
especially in a dark room.

Nothing beats the color of a CRT.  However, the new TVs are getting very 
close.

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> Nothing beats the color of a CRT.  However, the new TVs are getting very 
> close.

  Advantages of CRT:

- Cheap (not the least because the technology has existed for over 50 years).
- Excellent contrast and brightness.
- 180-degree viewing angle from all directions.
- Practically no limit in color depth.
- Easy (on hardware) to achieve any resolution and aspect ratio (up to a
  point, of course).

  Disadvantages of CRT:

- Requires bulky and heavy displays due to the nature of the technology.
- Can suffer from several types of distortions (eg. the color channels
  not being perfectly aligned).
- Can suffer from some degree of blurriness.
- Usually poor refresh rates at higher resolutions.
- Energy consumption and heat production.

  Advantages of LCD:

- Very thin and light displays.
- No distortions.
- Sharp image, no blurriness.

  Disadvantages of LCD (most of which are getting better as the technology
advances):

- Expensive (being relatively new technology).
- Relatively poor contrast (but it's fastly getting there).
- Often suffers from narrow viewing angles, especially vertically.
- Often has limited color depth, requiring software dithering, which
  reduces image quality.
- Dead pixels, which may be more annoying than the CRT distortions.
- Fixed resolution. Any alternative resolution has to be simulated by
  scaling pixels, which may produce ugly results for resolutions and
  aspect ratios which are not exact multiples of the resolution of the
  display.
- Can suffer from ghosting (especially older LCDs).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

>   Disadvantages of LCD (most of which are getting better as the technology
> advances):

> - Fixed resolution. Any alternative resolution has to be simulated by
>   scaling pixels, which may produce ugly results for resolutions and
>   aspect ratios which are not exact multiples of the resolution of the
>   display.

Yeah, that's a real bugger. One other nice thing about CRT monitors is that you
can 'squash and stretch' the screen display, to exactly (more or less) fill the
screen from corner to corner. (As opposed to CRT televisions, which--even with
the newer digital models, I think--still have that annoying 'overscan'
behavior, where we don't see ALL of the transmitted image. Mine does.) Of
course, LCD monitors and TVS don't even need squashing and stretching, since
(AFAIK) the input image is exactly mapped to all the screen pixels. Given their
fixed resolutions, of course.

Several years ago, my CRT computer monitor bit the dust, and I actually went
looking for an LCD replacement. Bought a Samsung model, brought it home, hooked
it up, ran a POV-Ray test scene--and I was shocked at how 'different' it looked.
I can't say better or worse, just different--not what I was used to. I *think*
it had to do with the 'system gamma' of the monitor, but not sure about that.
And even with adjustments, I still couldn't get it to look right. (Perhaps that
'older' LCD model lacked more modern adjustability, I don't know.)  In the end,
I took the thing back and got another CRT monitor. Have been happy ever since!

Oh, and it seems that 99.999% of the rabble don't even take the time to adjust
their new whiz-bang LCD/plasma/OLED widescreen displays, and happily watch
'fat' people on TV all day long, without a clue. Yes, technology can be
dangerous in the wrong hands! ;-)

KW

Post a reply to this message

Kenneth <kdw### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> Oh, and it seems that 99.999% of the rabble don't even take the time to adjust
> their new whiz-bang LCD/plasma/OLED widescreen displays, and happily watch
> 'fat' people on TV all day long, without a clue. Yes, technology can be
> dangerous in the wrong hands! ;-)

  Oh, don't get me started on that.

  For some reason 99.999% of people have a pathological obsession that
the image MUST fill the entire screen, no matter what. At least horizontally.
I have yet to meet the person who doesn't complain loudly if the TV image
does not fill the widescreen display horizontally.

  With some people this obsession goes to baffling levels. For instance,
they just *can't see* that the image is stretched. Even if you point it
out, they just deny seeing any stretching or anything wrong, no matter
how obvious it is.

  A stretched image bothers me a lot. I just *can't* watch anything if
the image is stretched. It just looks wrong and annoying. It seems that
I'm the only person in the world with this problem, though.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

> 
>   A stretched image bothers me a lot. I just *can't* watch anything if
> the image is stretched. It just looks wrong and annoying. It seems that
> I'm the only person in the world with this problem, though.
> 

The distortion annoys me, too. The main reason to have the screen filled 
instead of "pillar boxed" is if you have a CRT screen like mine it will 
cause burn-in, but now that most of what I watch is HD and fills the 
screen anyway, I don't care too much, and have set my TV to display 4:3 
stuff at 4:3 now. At least Sony's stretch didn't distort too horribly. 
It did a mild stretch and pushed the top and bottom of the image into 
overscan.

But it's completely unnecessary for LCD...

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

>>   A stretched image bothers me a lot. I just *can't* watch anything if
>> the image is stretched. It just looks wrong and annoying. It seems that
>> I'm the only person in the world with this problem, though.
>>
> 
> The distortion annoys me, too.

And me.

But my question would have to be... what the hell is so great about 
"widescreen" anyway?? Why is it that today everything must be 
widescreen? (Except for 99% of all the video you might want to watch...) 
Even my friggin' *laptop* is widescreen. WTF?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:54:04 -0400, Warp wrote:

>   With some people this obsession goes to baffling levels. For instance,
> they just *can't see* that the image is stretched. Even if you point it
> out, they just deny seeing any stretching or anything wrong, no matter
> how obvious it is.

I run into this now that we've moved to a home theatre projector and a 
16:9 screen.  I find I'm always fiddling to reset the setting my stepson 
has left.

Though in fairness, I tend for the two anamorphic settings because they 
generally work well, but I have run into a few DVDs where that didn't 
work.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> But my question would have to be... what the hell is so great about 
> "widescreen" anyway?? Why is it that today everything must be 
> widescreen? (Except for 99% of all the video you might want to watch...) 
> Even my friggin' *laptop* is widescreen. WTF?
> 

Movies. Movies have been widescreen forever. People want to watch the 
movie "unaltered" at home. That's why.

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

>> But my question would have to be... what the hell is so great about 
>> "widescreen" anyway?? Why is it that today everything must be 
>> widescreen? (Except for 99% of all the video you might want to 
>> watch...) Even my friggin' *laptop* is widescreen. WTF?
>>
> 
> Movies. Movies have been widescreen forever. People want to watch the 
> movie "unaltered" at home. That's why.

Really? I hadn't noticed that one.

Is there a reason why movies are filmed this way?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> But my question would have to be... what the hell is so great about
> >> "widescreen" anyway?? Why is it that today everything must be
> >> widescreen? (Except for 99% of all the video you might want to
> >> watch...) Even my friggin' *laptop* is widescreen. WTF?
> >
> > Movies. Movies have been widescreen forever. People want to watch the
> > movie "unaltered" at home. That's why.
>
> Really? I hadn't noticed that one.

I'll let you off if you claim you only ever watched movies on TV, where they've
been cropped for decades (until fairly recently) ;-)

> Is there a reason why movies are filmed this way?

The view around you is rarely interesting when looking up and down, but much
more so on the horizontal, especially with a wide field of view. Also, when
people are conversing, moving, fighting etc, they're separated on the
horizontal, not the vertical, so a wide screen lets you show more of the scene
at once... It really all comes down to the fact that we've evolved to live on a
flat 2d surface, our eyes are placed to pan on the horizontal, etc etc.

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:10:02 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> But my question would have to be... what the hell is so great about
>>> "widescreen" anyway?? Why is it that today everything must be
>>> widescreen? (Except for 99% of all the video you might want to
>>> watch...) Even my friggin' *laptop* is widescreen. WTF?
>>>
>>>
>> Movies. Movies have been widescreen forever. People want to watch the
>> movie "unaltered" at home. That's why.
> 
> Really? I hadn't noticed that one.

It was my understanding that most TVs in the UK these days are widescreen 
anyways; if that's the case, it's not surprising you wouldn't notice the 
difference. :-)

> Is there a reason why movies are filmed this way?

http://www.widescreen.org/aspect_ratios.shtml seems to have some relevant 
information.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   Disadvantages of CRT:
> 
> - Energy consumption and heat production.

I work in a local store, and when walking past the large screen 
televisions, which are all LCD or plasma displays, I can feel the heat 
rolling off of these things.  Even the smaller ones suck down a great 
deal of power.

Regards,
John

Post a reply to this message

Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

>   A stretched image bothers me a lot. I just *can't* watch anything if
> the image is stretched. It just looks wrong and annoying. It seems that
> I'm the only person in the world with this problem, though.
>

And me.  But I gave up on trying to point this out to friends. They seem
blissfully happy. I've even seen some folks watching widescreen movies that are
'extra'-stretched. I don't even know how that's possible, but they figured out a
way...

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:56:31 -0400, Kenneth wrote:

> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> 
>>   A stretched image bothers me a lot. I just *can't* watch anything if
>> the image is stretched. It just looks wrong and annoying. It seems that
>> I'm the only person in the world with this problem, though.
>>
>>
> And me.  But I gave up on trying to point this out to friends. They seem
> blissfully happy. I've even seen some folks watching widescreen movies
> that are 'extra'-stretched. I don't even know how that's possible, but
> they figured out a way...

You take a film shot in 16:9 and project it on a 16:9 screen using a 
setup for cinemascope - that'd do it.  Black bars at the top and bottom 
and a compressed image in the middle. :-)

I managed that one by mistake once in our home theater.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

>>> Movies. Movies have been widescreen forever. People want to watch the
>>> movie "unaltered" at home. That's why.
>> Really? I hadn't noticed that one.
> 
> It was my understanding that most TVs in the UK these days are widescreen 
> anyways; if that's the case, it's not surprising you wouldn't notice the 
> difference. :-)

Most *new* TVs are widescreen. (Indeed, it is apparently impossible to 
buy one that isn't.) Which is most perplexing, because there are no TV 
signals broadcast in widescreen, so owning a widescreen TV instantly 
means that everything you watch must either be distorted or have black 
bars down the sides. Um... and this is a "good" thing because...??

>> Is there a reason why movies are filmed this way?
> 
> http://www.widescreen.org/aspect_ratios.shtml seems to have some relevant 
> information.

Only really says what aspect ratios were used and how it was done - not 
why these ratios existed in the first place.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > It was my understanding that most TVs in the UK these days are widescreen
> > anyways; if that's the case, it's not surprising you wouldn't notice the
> > difference. :-)
>
> Most *new* TVs are widescreen. (Indeed, it is apparently impossible to
> buy one that isn't.) Which is most perplexing, because there are no TV
> signals broadcast in widescreen,

Um... most channels in the UK broadcast in widescreen, and have done for several
years. Most new shows are now recorded in widescreen too, even the BBC news.

Even prior to this, a widescreen TV could format a letterboxed movie without
distortion to fit the screen.

Post a reply to this message

>> Most *new* TVs are widescreen. (Indeed, it is apparently impossible to
>> buy one that isn't.) Which is most perplexing, because there are no TV
>> signals broadcast in widescreen,
> 
> Um... most channels in the UK broadcast in widescreen, and have done for several
> years. Most new shows are now recorded in widescreen too, even the BBC news.

Interesting. Everything I see on TV is still in 4:3 aspect.

> Even prior to this, a widescreen TV could format a letterboxed movie without
> distortion to fit the screen.

Sure, but nobody does this except for films. Normal TV programs are 
still in 4:3 aspect.



Now that my mum has a widescreen TV, this means that I can either have 
people with elliptical heads, huge black bars, or cut off half the 
picture. I opted for cutting off half the picture. (Which means that if 
they show something that *is* widescreen letterboxed, it comes out 
right. Except that, apparently, even "widescreen" films aren't actually 
16:9 aspect, so you still get letterboxing...)

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> Most *new* TVs are widescreen. (Indeed, it is apparently impossible to
> >> buy one that isn't.) Which is most perplexing, because there are no TV
> >> signals broadcast in widescreen,
> >
> > Um... most channels in the UK broadcast in widescreen, and have done for several
> > years. Most new shows are now recorded in widescreen too, even the BBC news.
>
> Interesting. Everything I see on TV is still in 4:3 aspect.

I don't know if the analogue signal supports widescreen, you might need to use a
digital receiver. Obviously, anything recorded before 2005/6 (whenever!) will be
4:3, and will be either stretched (urgh; I'm with Warp) or side-barred
(preferable) by a widescreen tv.

> Now that my mum has a widescreen TV, this means that I can either have
> people with elliptical heads, huge black bars, or cut off half the
> picture. I opted for cutting off half the picture. (Which means that if
> they show something that *is* widescreen letterboxed, it comes out
> right. Except that, apparently, even "widescreen" films aren't actually
> 16:9 aspect, so you still get letterboxing...)

Well, there's a range of movie aspect ratios, the "shortest" of which matches up
to the standard tv ratio (is that 16:9?). The wider format will indeed be
letterboxed even on a widescreen tv, although to a much lesser degree. You may
also have a 'zoom' setting (again, for movies), which will fill the screen
vertically and cut off a very small area of picture at the sides.

I must admit, the ability of widescreen TVs to automatically format the picture
is very variable. My current TV seems quite happy to side-bar, letterbox etc
depending on the signal, and only very occasionally seems to get confused, but
older CRT widescreens often were incapable of getting the ratio right without
manual intervention... :)

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Is there a reason why movies are filmed this way?

  Artistic image composition is easier on a widescreen image than on a
narrow image.

  Nature is very horizontal. This is fundamentally due to gravity: Everything
tends to level up on a horizontal plane due to gravity. Landscapes are vast
horizontal fields, and the vast majority of elements are located on this
surface. On the big scale everything is very flat, level and horizontal.

  The same goes for typical artificial constructs such as living quarters:
Rooms tend to be more spacious horizontally than vertically. Again, this
is due to gravity: People need to move horizontally, which means that people
need a lot more space horizontally than vertically.

  It's no wonder that a widescreen image is much more suitable for image
composition than a narrow image. In any typical scene you can fit a lot
more content in a widescreen image than on a narrow one. For example two
people standing on the ground are usually going to be separated horizontally
from each other, not vertically. Even a great separation can be captured
more easily on a widescreen image.

  The narrower the image is, the more "empty space" there will going to
be. For example, if you film a vast landscape using a very narrow aspect
ratio, a really big portion of the image will be empty sky which does not
bring anything to the image. A widescreen image, however, allows showing
more detail of the lanscape with less useless empty space.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:

> >   Disadvantages of CRT:
> > 
> > - Energy consumption and heat production.

> I work in a local store, and when walking past the large screen 
> televisions, which are all LCD or plasma displays, I can feel the heat 
> rolling off of these things.  Even the smaller ones suck down a great 
> deal of power.

  Well, technically speaking I didn't claim that energy consumption is not
a problem with LCDs... :P

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

>> Now that my mum has a widescreen TV, this means that I can either have
>> people with elliptical heads, huge black bars, or cut off half the
>> picture. I opted for cutting off half the picture. (Which means that if
>> they show something that *is* widescreen letterboxed, it comes out
>> right. Except that, apparently, even "widescreen" films aren't actually
>> 16:9 aspect, so you still get letterboxing...)
> 
> Well, there's a range of movie aspect ratios, the "shortest" of which matches up
> to the standard tv ratio (is that 16:9?). The wider format will indeed be
> letterboxed even on a widescreen tv, although to a much lesser degree. You may
> also have a 'zoom' setting (again, for movies), which will fill the screen
> vertically and cut off a very small area of picture at the sides.
> 
> I must admit, the ability of widescreen TVs to automatically format the picture
> is very variable. My current TV seems quite happy to side-bar, letterbox etc
> depending on the signal, and only very occasionally seems to get confused, but
> older CRT widescreens often were incapable of getting the ratio right without
> manual intervention... :)

Most TVs I see either have the whole picture distorted, or they have 
that "magic mode" that's supposed to fix the picture, but doesn't. It 
makes it so that stuff in the center looks OK, but stuff near the edges 
is horribly distorted.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   Disadvantages of LCD:

> - Relatively poor contrast (but it's fastly getting there).

And brightness. (Although this tends to be more of a problem with small, 
portable displays. And since it's impossible to make a small, portable 
CRT display *at all*, I guess we can live with that.)

> - Often has limited color depth, requiring software dithering, which
>   reduces image quality.

My PC monitor has this. It's surprisingly annoying.

> - Dead pixels, which may be more annoying than the CRT distortions.

This seems to be very, very rare. I've only seen it on one or two LCD 
displays. [Including the one I'm using right now, BTW.] Well over 99% of 
the LCDs I've seen have no dead pixels at all.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Most TVs I see either have the whole picture distorted, or they have
> that "magic mode" that's supposed to fix the picture, but doesn't. It
> makes it so that stuff in the center looks OK, but stuff near the edges
> is horribly distorted.

Oh yeah, I know the one you mean. Ghastly. Worse than regular stretching, IMO!

Post a reply to this message

Bill Pragnell wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Most TVs I see either have the whole picture distorted, or they have
>> that "magic mode" that's supposed to fix the picture, but doesn't. It
>> makes it so that stuff in the center looks OK, but stuff near the edges
>> is horribly distorted.
> 
> Oh yeah, I know the one you mean. Ghastly. Worse than regular stretching, IMO!

Damn straight!

I guess they figure all the "interesting" stuff will always be in the 
center of the image or something.

Still, no matter what you do, there is no way the problem can ever be 
solved without distortion or black bars. It's just mathematically 
impossible. Which is why I find it so puzzling that manufacturers have 
artificially created this problem in the first place...

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de news: 
49f194db$1@news.povray.org...

> Most TVs I see either have the whole picture distorted, or they have that 
> "magic mode" that's supposed to fix the picture, but doesn't. It makes it 
> so that stuff in the center looks OK, but stuff near the edges is horribly 
> distorted.

You're sure of that? I just bought a LCD (a 600? LG model, nothing fancy), 
and the remote has a neat "Ratio" button that lets me browse through a bunch 
of different formats so that I can pick the best one depending on the input 
(Internet, DVD, satellite etc.) and there's no distortion except when I 
choose 16:9 for a 4:3 input.

G.

Post a reply to this message

"Gilles Tran" <gil### [at] agroparistechfr> wrote:
> "Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de news:
> 49f194db$1@news.povray.org...
>
> > Most TVs I see either have the whole picture distorted, or they have that
> > "magic mode" that's supposed to fix the picture, but doesn't. It makes it
> > so that stuff in the center looks OK, but stuff near the edges is horribly
> > distorted.
>
> You're sure of that? I just bought a LCD (a 600? LG model, nothing fancy),
> and the remote has a neat "Ratio" button that lets me browse through a bunch
> of different formats so that I can pick the best one depending on the input
> (Internet, DVD, satellite etc.) and there's no distortion except when I
> choose 16:9 for a 4:3 input.

Can't speak for The Invisible One, but I've only ever seen that non-uniform
distortion on widescreen CRTs.

Post a reply to this message

>>> Most TVs I see either have the whole picture distorted, or they have that
>>> "magic mode" that's supposed to fix the picture, but doesn't. It makes it
>>> so that stuff in the center looks OK, but stuff near the edges is horribly
>>> distorted.
>> You're sure of that? I just bought a LCD (a 600? LG model, nothing fancy),
>> and the remote has a neat "Ratio" button that lets me browse through a bunch
>> of different formats so that I can pick the best one depending on the input
>> (Internet, DVD, satellite etc.) and there's no distortion except when I
>> choose 16:9 for a 4:3 input.
> 
> Can't speak for The Invisible One, but I've only ever seen that non-uniform
> distortion on widescreen CRTs.

Lots of LCD TVs seem to have a "magnify" mode that stretches the sides 
so that the middle can be unstretched. It looks slightly less bad than 
unifirm stretching, but still no match for having a signal who's aspect 
ratio actually matches the screen.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Still, no matter what you do, there is no way the problem can ever be 
> solved without distortion or black bars.

  You forgot the third option (which most widescreen TVs support): Zoom
the 4:3 image until it fits the 16:9 screen.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Still, no matter what you do, there is no way the problem can ever be 
>> solved without distortion or black bars.
> 
>   You forgot the third option (which most widescreen TVs support): Zoom
> the 4:3 image until it fits the 16:9 screen.

Ah yes, optio 3: cut off the edges. (Which means that any signal 
containing a 16:9 image padded to 4:3 aspect looks perfect, while normal 
4:3 has bits of the edges missing.)

This is the option I use on my mum's TV. Usually the missing parts 
aren't that important. (Although one still wonders why they created this 
problem to begin with...)

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> This seems to be very, very rare. I've only seen it on one or two LCD 
> displays. [Including the one I'm using right now, BTW.] Well over 99% of 
> the LCDs I've seen have no dead pixels at all.

  Depends on the LCD too.

  My PSP had two dead pixels (one was always off, the other was always white).
I had the PSP changed due to a button getting broken, and the new PSP has
one dead pixel (but it's only slightly "dead", as it looks a lot smaller
than the full dead pixels and fortunately doesn't bother so much; probably
has only one color channel dead).

  This is a known issue at least with the original PSP. You just have to
live with it.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Usually the missing parts aren't that important.

  They are important because they change the image composition.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> This seems to be very, very rare. I've only seen it on one or two LCD 
>> displays. [Including the one I'm using right now, BTW.] Well over 99% of 
>> the LCDs I've seen have no dead pixels at all.
> 
>   Depends on the LCD too.

Yeah, it does seem to vary. I see LCDs with multiple dead pixels, and I 
see others with absolutely none. Like, each time I walk into our lab 
office, I see 12 monitors, all LCD, all with zero dead pixels. Yet the 
one at my desk has 4 dead pixels.

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Warp wrote:
>   Nature is very horizontal. 

Even the eyes of horses and goats (and others) have horizontal pupils for 
this reason.


-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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On 4/23/2009 11:54 AM, Warp wrote:
>    A stretched image bothers me a lot. I just *can't* watch anything if
> the image is stretched. It just looks wrong and annoying. It seems that
> I'm the only person in the world with this problem, though.

You're not alone.

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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On 4/23/2009 1:34 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> But my question would have to be... what the hell is so great about
> "widescreen" anyway?? Why is it that today everything must be
> widescreen? (Except for 99% of all the video you might want to watch...)
> Even my friggin' *laptop* is widescreen. WTF?

16x9 more closely matches what you actually see with your eyes, so it's 
more immersive overall.

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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On 4/23/2009 1:43 PM, Mike Raiford wrote:
> Movies. Movies have been widescreen forever. People want to watch the
> movie "unaltered" at home. That's why.

By the way, is anyone else annoyed by the fact that as soon as most TVs 
sold became 16x9, people started making movies in 22:10?  WTF, people, 
make up your minds!

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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On 4/24/2009 3:33 AM, Invisible wrote:
> And brightness. (Although this tends to be more of a problem with small,
> portable displays. And since it's impossible to make a small, portable
> CRT display *at all*, I guess we can live with that.)

http://mandmonlineshopping.com/images/jensen-j56-bwr.jpg

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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Chambers wrote:

> 
> http://mandmonlineshopping.com/images/jensen-j56-bwr.jpg
> 

Awww, how cute.

-- 
~Mike

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Chambers wrote:
> On 4/24/2009 3:33 AM, Invisible wrote:
>> And brightness. (Although this tends to be more of a problem with small,
>> portable displays. And since it's impossible to make a small, portable
>> CRT display *at all*, I guess we can live with that.)
> 
> http://mandmonlineshopping.com/images/jensen-j56-bwr.jpg

The screen on my mobile phone is less than an inch square. I'm fairly 
sure they don't make CRTs that small.

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On Fri, 24 Apr 2009 09:10:15 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>>> Movies. Movies have been widescreen forever. People want to watch the
>>>> movie "unaltered" at home. That's why.
>>> Really? I hadn't noticed that one.
>> 
>> It was my understanding that most TVs in the UK these days are
>> widescreen anyways; if that's the case, it's not surprising you
>> wouldn't notice the difference. :-)
> 
> Most *new* TVs are widescreen. (Indeed, it is apparently impossible to
> buy one that isn't.) Which is most perplexing, because there are no TV
> signals broadcast in widescreen, so owning a widescreen TV instantly
> means that everything you watch must either be distorted or have black
> bars down the sides. Um... and this is a "good" thing because...??

HDTV broadcasts (ATSC here in the US and Hi-Definition cable channels) 
are all in widescreen.  I seem to remember when visiting the UK a few 
years ago that the broadcast signals we watched there also tended to be 
in widescreen.  In fact, it seemed more popular than 4:3 broadcasts from 
what I saw.

>>> Is there a reason why movies are filmed this way?
>> 
>> http://www.widescreen.org/aspect_ratios.shtml seems to have some
>> relevant information.
> 
> Only really says what aspect ratios were used and how it was done - not
> why these ratios existed in the first place.

Check out the other pages on the site...

Jim

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On Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:46:29 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> Sure, but nobody does this except for films. Normal TV programs are
> still in 4:3 aspect.

Untrue.  I watch QI, Spooks, Spooks:Code 9, and a few other shows out of 
the UK that are recorded by friends in the UK for me.  They're all in 
widescreen.

Jim

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> The screen on my mobile phone is less than an inch square. I'm fairly 
> sure they don't make CRTs that small.

  I remember reading/hearing about a proposed new CRT technology where
the idea was that instead of having just one cathode ray for the entire
screen (ok, three rays, one for each color component), you would have
one ray (well, three rays) per pixel.

  The advantage of this is that the cathode ray emitters can be made very
small and simple (as they don't require the controlling magnets) and they
can be brought very close to the screen. Thus you basically get a very
thin and relatively lightweigth screen with all the advantages of CRT.

  (Of course you also get some of the disadvantages of LCD, eg. the fixed
resolution.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Le 24/04/2009 15:47, Darren New nous fit lire :
> Warp wrote:
>>   Nature is very horizontal. 
> 
> Even the eyes of horses and goats (and others) have horizontal pupils
> for this reason.
> 
> 
So, should I conclude that, in a world of sheep, 16:9 creen is better than 4:3 ?

A world of sheep, tranquil herbivores... opposed to a fierce world of predators.

Just follow, no initiative!

 Work dumb, Survive, Buy, Consum. No question.


Yes... seems to fit the requirements.

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Le 23/04/2009 09:29, Warp nous fit lire :

>   Disadvantages of CRT:
> 

You forget: it's heavy and taking a lot of room (and hard worker to move them!)
From a seller point of view, a CRT space is happily replaced by 4 to 10 LCD in the
stocking room. In the display room, LCD give you back 2 square meter per linear meter
of
exposition. More stock, more room... who cares!

So, do the math... less for storage, less investement for showing... even if the
colours
are ugly, the display is horrible, the market has an offer no-seller could refuse with
LCD. (and who care about the consumer... he will believe the marketing!)

Still waiting for oled... sadly.

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Le_Forgeron <jgr### [at] freefr> wrote:
> Le 23/04/2009 09:29, Warp nous fit lire :

> >   Disadvantages of CRT:
> > 

> You forget: it's heavy and taking a lot of room (and hard worker to move them!)

  Not really:

> > - Requires bulky and heavy displays due to the nature of the technology.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   I remember reading/hearing about a proposed new CRT technology where

I also read of one where you had two guns, one just before the phospher 
screen and one behind it, pointing up, with a mag field that curved the beam 
to hit the sides of the screen.  Apparently a yellow/purple combination can 
give you almost as good color as tri-color beams.  If you wanted a very 
large flat CRT, that's how you could do it.

I don't think the idea ever developed into a commercial product, probably 
*because* LCDs got there first.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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On Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:56:35 +0200, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   I remember reading/hearing about a proposed new CRT technology where
> the idea was that instead of having just one cathode ray for the entire
> screen (ok, three rays, one for each color component), you would have
> one ray (well, three rays) per pixel.

SED?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-conduction_electron-emitter_display


-- 
FE

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