sacredchao wrote:Ive got a couple of questions -
Ill be getting a PS3 and a 16:9 HDTV soon, and I'm wandering what will happen with 4:3 discs. I'm specifically thinking of the newer 3 disk edition of Seven Samurai. Will the image be stretched? Or will it sit in the middle of the screen with black bands, ala widescreen on a 4:3 tv? Also, will it be upconverted?
If you set the PS3 up so that it thinks you have a 16x9 TV, 4x3 material will sit in the middle of the screen. It can be upconverted if you use a HDMI connection to your TV, and you can configure whether you want upconversion in the setup.
Also, I understand that Blu-ray has 3 regions and all, but what about pal and ntsc. Will the PS3 convert between the two? For example, if I bought the Tartan Seventh Seal BRD from amazon.co.uk, would it work (Tartan having stated their disks will be region-free)?
This has been answered here before, but high definition is neither PAL nor NTSC. A Blu-ray disc will work in all countries, subject to region coding only.
Why are anamorphic studio releases of 1.85 framed films cropped to 16x9 (1.78)? I mean, I get why, but why are people okay with this? I know there's not much information being lost, but there is some. I feel like I can notice it. In a few years when everything is shot on HD, this won't matter, but it's annoying - and no one caring is off-putting as well.
There's some relevant discussion of this in the Stanley Kubrick thread:
Jeff wrote:
Andre Jurieu wrote:
denti alligator wrote:The 1.78 AR is a troubling phenomenon. There are a number of 1.85 films that end up as 1.78 in HD. This needs to end. Now.
Isn't this just done to better match the 16:9 ratio? Does the image ever really suffer from the missing portion? I'm all for as much image as possible, but I'm not really going to start pulling out my hair unless it's valuable image that is being lost. If you watch any 1.85 or 2.35 film at the theatre there are slight portions of the image that never synch up to the screen perfectly and I have my doubts that every theatre ever created has a perfectly constructed screen that matches the desired ratio exactly. If someone can actually point out at least a handful of films that suffer greatly from the missing 0.07 then I would also start to protest this routine formatting practice because it has been proved to be consequential. However, I doubt I've ever observed an instance in which including the missing 0.07 results in a dramatically different interpretation of the film based on the bastardized images. This doesn't strike me as a similar occurence as "colorizing" black and white films, since that practice usually resulted in drawing attention away from specific aspects of the original image. I doubt very many directors or cinematographers even worry that much about the practice.
Well said. And 1.85 films that are transferred at 1.78 aren't actually "missing" any image. They are gaining 0.07. 1.85 films are almost always shot at 1.37 then matted for projection. When they are transferred at 1.78, the mattes are opened up slightly.
I recently bought the Pioneer DV-600, after my old Panasonic finally had given up the ghost. Basically, the Pioneer is fine, but there seems to be a problem (and please forgive me that I never was able to understand these technical bits correctly despite of the various threads here concerning interlaced/progressive, pulldown etc.). I watch on a Philips widescreen tube via SCART input, and the TV is capable to play both NTSC and PAL without any conversion needed or performed.
So: with some discs , e.g. the UK R2 of Wenders' "The American Friend" or the German R2 of "The scarlet letter" by the same director, the image is horrible (colour bleeding, unsharpness etc.) when the player is set to either RGB or Component output Interlaced. The problems are gone when I set the player to Component/Progressive. I assume these discs are interlaced (with the German disc, the problem is only apparent with the menus, so the film itself is probably progressive, while the menus are interlaced). There seems to be no problem or difference with PAL discs that are already progressive, and which play fine on RGB.
Now you could say, why not always keep the setting Component/Progressive? Answer is: when I put in an NTSC black and wide disc , e.g. CC's "Umberto D." or "A Canterbury Tale", I get a terrible amount of what I believe is chroma noise or aliasing artefacting, i.e. blueish or rainbow-coloured shimmering in critical scenes with a lot of black-white differences (roof tops, branches, suits, details of the map at the beginning of "Canterbury", etc.). Setting the player back to RGB, the coloured artefacts are gone (but then I can't have the 'progressive' setting for the problematic Wenders discs any more, and I believe these will not be the only ones).
Now, I find it inconvenient to switch the player's mode every time depending on the disc, and what annoys me it that this problem didn't occur at all with my old Panasonic RV-32 (which didn't even have an additional interlaced/progressive option) when set to RGB, i.e. it played both these CCs and the interlaced Wenders discs fine with that setting. So, what exactly is the reason for this problem with the Pioneer? Is it a problem with the PAL or with the NTSC output, or incorrect playing of interlaced discs via RGB? I tried all the available options in the Pioneer's initial settings menu, even experimentally switching the player from 'Auto' to 'PAL' so that it does NTSC-PAL60 conversion although I don't need it, with no result (and surprisingly not even a worse image). So I believe it can't be helped, but I would still like to know the reason for this. Any ideas?
if I am running the Toshiba HD-A3 into my tv on component will SD dvds upconvert to 1080i? I was considering buying an oppo player but the A3 and 10 free hd-dvds is almost too good to pass up. can anyone comment on the upconverting abilities of the oppo vs HD-A3?
SncDthMnky wrote:if I am running the Toshiba HD-A3 into my tv on component will SD dvds upconvert to 1080i? I was considering buying an oppo player but the A3 and 10 free hd-dvds is almost too good to pass up. can anyone comment on the upconverting abilities of the oppo vs HD-A3?
I recently purchased a Sony Bravia (KDL46W3000). For the most part, I'm incredibly happy with it, but occasionally, usually during white on black credits, the black levels go up and down quite drastically and seemingly at random. Can anyone tell me if this is a setting that needs to be changed? I've tried various combinations, but nothing seems to get rid of it.
I've experienced this on both DVD's and Blu-ray discs through two different players (Sony DVD player and PS3).
I'd appreciate any advice anyone could provide. Thanks.
I experienced the same thing with my 2 month old XBR4 and found it distracting/annoying. I am pretty sure here's the reason for it:
(are you ready for this???)
You know how your TV is advertised as 16000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and 2000:1 actual contrast ratio? Well, what is happening is that when the TV detects a lot of darks, it is able to shift the brightness on ALL of the pixels to match up to 16000:1 contrast from their brightness as a group, but the darkest to the lightest pixel can only ever be 2000:1.
My TV, as an XBR is 18000:1 and I've come to realize that that whole dynamic contrast ratio is basically a HUGE marketing scam. It's actually ANNOYING and you can't turn it off even if you want to (well, I haven't found out how, anyway).
Edit: I received this response from AVS Forum. I'll try it out when I get back home. I hope it works:
You're experiencing the dimming function (something like a screensaver) of the TV and it's most dramatic during credits. It's working as intended. It's not random, it just dims the backlight depending on the amount of moving/new material being put up on screen.
To get rid of it, earlier posts and I have confirmed, you just need to enable "game mode" on the input channel. It'll disable your ability to switch picture profiles for that channel, but you're not really supposed to do that anyway so~
I have DVD that is basically new, but it's got this foggy veneer to it that makes it unplayable. I've seen this happen to CDs before and have heard that there's an easy fix.
I seem to have a strange compatibility issue with a DVD (Miles Davis: The Cool Jazz Sound from EFOR Films) and am a little unsure what I can do. It starts freezing up around the start of the second track when I play it on my Oppo but it will play with no problems on a different player and on my MacBook. It's a R0 disc and was new out of the shrinkwrap when I played it. This is the first time I've had this problem. If expect that if I exchange the disc I will still have the same problem. If anyone has any ideas on what the problem here might be, I'd appreciate them.
I don't know what the problem might be, but if it plays on your Mac you should be able to rip it to a DVD-R using MacTheRipper. If the DVD-R doesn't play on your Oppo either, then at least you'll have eliminated any physical defects as the source of the problem.
This is more a nuisance than a problem, but I hope someone who understands computers better than I can help. I'm running Windows XP, and when I put a DVD in my DVD player, all that happens is a (useless) window with the contents of the disc opens up. There once was an autoplay, but now I have to manually start my DVD player (WinDVD) to get the disc to play. I'm sure there's a setting somewhere that I changed inadvertently and easily can reset, but I sure can't locate it. Can anyone help? TIA.
I have a problem: I sold a new and sealed DVD of FM (made by Anchor Bay) and the customer tells me that it doesn't play. I heard stories about early Anchor Bay DVD releases just going kaput after some time. Is there any way to fix the DVD? Exchange it?
dx23 wrote:I have a problem: I sold a new and sealed DVD of FM (made by Anchor Bay) and the customer tells me that it doesn't play. I heard stories about early Anchor Bay DVD releases just going kaput after some time. Is there any way to fix the DVD? Exchange it?
Ask the buyer to try to see if it will play on other machines (or in a PC drive). It could be a weird (in)compatibility issue.
fiddlesticks wrote:This is more a nuisance than a problem, but I hope someone who understands computers better than I can help. I'm running Windows XP, and when I put a DVD in my DVD player, all that happens is a (useless) window with the contents of the disc opens up. There once was an autoplay, but now I have to manually start my DVD player (WinDVD) to get the disc to play. I'm sure there's a setting somewhere that I changed inadvertently and easily can reset, but I sure can't locate it. Can anyone help? TIA.
Fiddlesticks: I am not sure this will solve your problem, but it's worth a try:
Open any folder and select "Tools | Folder Options" from the menu. On the File Types tab, select DVD and click "Advanced" From there either select "Play" as the default (if it's listed) or create your own by selecting "New...". You can call the action whatever you want, I believe. Under the "Application used..." part, mine says '"C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe" /prefetch:4 /device:DVD "%L"' (without single quotes). That's for WMP (you can probably select your own program if you want). I don't believe this step is necessary (and I wouldn't do it myself unless it still didn't work), but after all that you may want to click on the "View" tab and select "Apply to All Folders". Then make sure to click the "Set Default" button with your new action selected.
(After this you may get the dialog popping up again that asks you what action you want to take, and the obvious one would be to choose "play back" or whatever)
This has to do with CyberLink's PowerDVD software, which is what I use on my laptop.
Starting today, in order to hear audio through my headphones, I have to have PowerDVD open. If I try to watch something on YouTube or a DVD through Media Player Classic (good for when I'm multitasking), I can't hear any sound. If I open PowerDVD (not even play a video in it), sound comes on.
The same thing happened to me many many years ago when I was still on a PC. If I remember correctly, you need to open your sound application to the full window and then there's a box that either needs to be selected or unselected-- play around with it or Google the problem, it's a spontaneous and common glitch in Windows.
