2010's display format (aspect ratio)

[lrankine]

Not sure if I'm using the correct terminology on the thread title so please forgive me......in anticipation of getting the BD version of 2001 A Space Odyssey for Christmas I just put on 2010 to watch using the wide screen version. IMHO these two movies are certainly one of the great sci-fi classics of all time. One can only hope that 2010 will be released in BD some day but I digress........ The wide screen version of this movie has inordinately large black strips top and bottom of screen. Much larger than "normal" wide screen movies. Is this something that's part of the movie or is it something that I can rectify by a setting on my BD player? If it is part of the movie can one of you experts out there give me a quick tutorial on why this happens? Thanks in advance for everyone's feedback and here's wishing everyone a very happy, healthy and Blu-Ray Christmas!

[Seretur]

Movies are shot in many kinds of aspect ratios -- and the size of the black bars will vary accordingly. Here's a good overview over at High Def Digest.

Merry Christmas to you too!

[stockstar1138]

Originally Posted by lrankine

Not sure if I'm using the correct terminology on the thread title so please forgive me......in anticipation of getting the BD version of 2001 A Space Odyssey for Christmas I just put on 2010 to watch using the wide screen version. IMHO these two movies are certainly one of the great sci-fi classics of all time. One can only hope that 2010 will be released in BD some day but I digress........ The wide screen version of this movie has inordinately large black strips top and bottom of screen. Much larger than "normal" wide screen movies. Is this something that's part of the movie or is it something that I can rectify by a setting on my BD player? If it is part of the movie can one of you experts out there give me a quick tutorial on why this happens? Thanks in advance for everyone's feedback and here's wishing everyone a very happy, healthy and Blu-Ray Christmas!

Movies are shot at different aspect ratios. Aspect ratios are the ratio between the size of the movie horizontally to the size of the movie vertically. For example a normal TV broadcast is shot in what we know as a 1.66:1 aspect ratio, as the horizontal size of the picture of the show is 1.66 times greater than the vertical size of the picture. Almost all HDTVs are a 16:9 or 1.77 aspect ratio. Since the aspect ratio on an hdtv is wider than that of a TV show, you get black bars on the sides when watching normal 4:3 (aka 1.66), broadcasts Many movies are shot in wider aspect ratio than 1.77, tahts why you get black bars on the top and bottom. 2001 was shot in an aspect ratio that is much wider than the aspect ratio that most movies are shot in, im sure 2010 was shot in the same one too (never seen it though, only 2001). That is why you are getting bigger black bars on the top in bottom when watching these movies as compared to others. This is the intent these movies were meant to be seen in.

Now if you want to fix this, i reccommend you don't. Most TVs have a 16:9 zoom somewhere in their settings. This will make the picture fill up the entire screen, however, you will lose part of the picture when you zoom in on it.

[DrinkMore]

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=5528

Enough said

[lrankine]

Guys!.........This is great information......thank you so much for sharing it! Stockstar....you've GOT to see 2010! It's a great sequel! You know it's good when you're sub woofer vibrates the entire ROOM!

[WickyWoo]

I don:t think 2010 is anamorphic, but I:m away from my copy so I can]t check

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

I don:t think 2010 is anamorphic, but I:m away from my copy so I can]t check

Mine isn't. But, it is labelled as so.

Gary

[Jason One]

lrankine, as the last two posters have hit on, what you are experiencing is because the 2010 DVD is non-anamorphic (in other words, it is not enhanced for widescreen displays). This is not just a case of normal movie aspect ratio variation.

The Digital Bits has a good visual demonstration here of how anamorphic enhancement works for a 2.35:1 movie (like 2010).

Take the image on the very bottom left of the page. Your Blu-ray player is stretching that image out horizontally to fill your entire 16:9 display, resulting in unusually large black bars and a "squished" image.

I know that some Blu-ray players can properly "zoom" the non-anamorphic image so that it displays in the correct proportions on a widescreen display, but unfortunately the player I own (PS3) does not have this capability, and from the sound of it yours does not either. It is possible they could add this to the PS3 in a future firmware update, and I hope they do, because I still own quite a few non-anamorphic DVDs.