I want to mask the black bars on my TV. Have you tried this?

[unberechenbar]

Originally Posted by Warm Gun

What's wrong with it?

I don't think there's anything wrong with it. It's just an old model from 2 years ago that they're trying to get rid of. It lacks gaming features like 4K at 120 Hz and VRR/ALLM but not a bad price if you can find it.

[Socko]

Hmmm, so you mask the black bars, how will you navigate through all the menus, won't the disc menus or TV menus be behind those masked parts?

[Warm Gun]

Originally Posted by Socko

Hmmm, so you mask the black bars, how will you navigate through all the menus, won't the disc menus or TV menus be behind those masked parts?

I set my receiver volume and basic audio options to appear only on the receiver long ago. I never need to use the TV menu if I'm already watching a movie. My movies are all backed up, so I only ever use my BD/UHD player if I need to check something in the disc's menu. If I need to stop for something, I can exit the movie and select either 2960x2160 or 3840x1632 in my GPU's display settings. My media player remembers when I stopped in the movie.

[tcripe]

What do you do if a film has a 1:85:1 aspect ratio or has expanded aspect ratio scenes?

[Warm Gun]

Originally Posted by tcripe

What do you do if a film has a 1:85:1 aspect ratio or has expanded aspect ratio scenes?

I'm not gonna bother masking 1.85. It's close enough to 1.77.

I'm also not gonna mask movies with alternating aspect ratios, obviously. But I don't like it. Nolan should stop. Reminds me that I'm watching a construct. For me, the reality of the movie is within that framing (with nothing existing outside of it), and switching to another suddenly takes me out of it.

I should have made the masks wider, to accommodate more aspect ratios. Had to watch That Hamilton Woman (Criterion DVD in 1.33:1) yesterday with grey coming out of the edges of the screen.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by Warm Gun

I'm not gonna bother masking 1.85. It's close enough to 1.77.

1.85:1 seems to suffer with some displays the most as the local dimming can't always turn off the thin sliver of letterboxing.

It would have been great if local dimming was designed to actual turn off the screen areas for specific ratios and our players knew what was happening (so we wouldn't lose menus) and that would have helped folks with projectors too.

I've also wondered can local dimming turn off parts of the screen and leave a crisp line? or is there some fuzziness?

[Lee A Stewart]

Adjustable television mask

https://patents.google.com/patent/US5175627

[David M]

Originally Posted by Warm Gun

They stick out like a sore thumb depending on the disc and my TV's local dimming. Plenty of discs aren't well enough encoded for the letterboxes to be truly black.

It's extremely rare for a disc to be encoded with anything other than non-black letterboxing (it has happened once or twice though). The problem is your display and the flaws inherent to LCD + local dimming, not the disc.

[Warm Gun]

Originally Posted by David M

It's extremely rare for a disc to be encoded with anything other than non-black letterboxing (it has happened once or twice though). The problem is your display and the flaws inherent to LCD + local dimming, not the disc.

Not that rare at all. I can list off a few movies that have compression artifacts in the black bars. You just rarely see them if you're using the right colors. Like I said in post 10, my receiver was not carrying the full signal back to the TV. Through that receiver, my GPU was at colors 16-235 and my media player was at 0-255, so the colors were elevated by 16 levels when played on this 16-235 TV. Setting both the GPU and media player to 16-235 made the picture appear even more washed out. Now that I'm sending the audio to the receiver with one HDMI and sending the video to the TV with a DisplayPort 1.4 to HDMI 2.1 adapter (since my GPU has only one HDMI), I am able to use RGB 10-bit and my TV is displaying the correct 16-235 of the full 0-255. Only drawback to this method is that I am now stuck with a phantom display where my mouse disappears and my icons/shortcuts sometimes move, since there is no way to send an audio-only HDMI signal. Black bars are still dark grayish, though. That is my display, yes.

[Warm Gun]

I never saw compression artifacts in the black bars of HDR 4K movies, probably because with HDR there is either the full signal or there isn't. Nothing getting elevated by my receiver.

[David M]

Originally Posted by Warm Gun

Not that rare at all. I can list off a few movies that have compression artifacts in the black bars.

If the active picture area and the bar intersects a block boundary, there'll be some minor mosquito noise or other disturbance at the very edge of the bar, which won't be visible under normal conditions (you'd have to pull the black level up quite a bit). The rest should nearly always be solid black on HD-era masters.

I never saw compression artifacts in the black bars of HDR 4K movies, probably because with HDR there is either the full signal or there isn't. Nothing getting elevated by my receiver.

If your receiver is distorting the video levels, try taking it out of the chain temporarily as a test. Does the same happen if you connect the player directly to the display?

[Warm Gun]

Originally Posted by David M

If your receiver is distorting the video levels, try taking it out of the chain temporarily as a test. Does the same happen if you connect the player directly to the display?

I haven't watched any SDR Blu-rays on my LG UP870 for a long time. Both through the receiver and directly to the TV, I can see the flashing black bars in One Sings, the Other Doesn't, unless I switch the player from Standard color to Movie. Back when I still used the player, I always watched in Standard, because I didn't know how dark movies were supposed to be. I don't know if the receiver only can't carry full range color at 3840x2160 60 Hz, but the darks in this movie still seem a little nicer on my Full/RGB PC to Limited/YCbCr TV setup. I tried setting the player to both YCbCr and RGB and neither made the scene look quite as nice as my PC. It was a cheap player. Geoff D told me about two years ago that Windows is made for RGB and using YCbCr in any step before the TV makes the picture look wrong. From my experimentation, this appears true. I want to rewatch so many discs in the correct gamma level now and would if I didn't have so much already on my "list."