Grey Bars (maybe this has been asked before)

[Lee Christie]

Sorry if this has been asked before, I did search, don't yell at me.

I know that due to the lots of different aspect ratios, black bars are going to show up. I can live with that, but here's what i don't understand, maybe someone can explain it to me.

I draw a picture:



I'm NOT asking why the number of lines in the encoded video isn't the same as my screen. I'm NOT asking why the number of lines in the picture isn't the same as my screen.

I'm asking about those grey bars. If the movie is a certain ratio, why not encode a video at that ratio on to the disc, why add extra lines and color them NEARLY-but-not-quite-black. It seems to be that if you by some coincidence had a screen (or more likely a resizable PowerDVD window) the same ratio as the movie picture, you'd be forced to endure grey bars and the top and bottom, plus black bars at the left and right (for not matching the video ratio)

Is there any reason they add the extra grey lines?

And is there any reason they don't at least make them pure RGB(0, 0, 0) so they blend in with the actual black bars?


EDIT: okay just before you guys rip on me for complaining about something minor, i'd like to mention there are two reasons i don't like them:

1. The black bars are the same color as my monitor, so it don't notice those, but the grey ones are more noticable.

2. If I feal lke stretching the video to fullscreen (which I do when the aspect ratio is similar enough that it wont look distorted) - that makes the black bars go away but the grey bars stay because as far as the software and hardware know, those grey bars might be something i want to look as (after all someone went ot the bother of encoding them in to the disc didn't they) - so i don't know how to make PowerDVD (for example) strech further beyond that so that the grey bars go away too.

I noticed these all the time on DVD i thought they'd go away when the invented a new type of medium (be it Blu-ray or whatever else)

Please don't flame me, it hurts.