[mythtv-users] OT: Aspect ratio broadcast rant

f-myth-users at media.mit.edu f-myth-users at media.mit.edu
Fri Feb 19 05:41:13 UTC 2016


    > Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2016 19:51:36 -0600
    > From: Saul <jaglover at gmail.com>

    > > And I'd rather see anamophic widescreen.
    > > 
    > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_widescreen

    > Not me. I'm purist. Black bars on side are OK with me, any stretching
    > is not.

There's no stretching.  At least on my Sony, anamorphic widescreen
tells the TV to use just as many scanlines as before, but to pack
them closer together, such that it's using all the pixels of 4:3 but
displaying them in 16:9.  This means you don't lose any resolution,
but are displaying 16:9 content at 16:9 aspect ratio.  Essentially,
it's saying to the vertical axis deflection system, "deflect less."
If I look very closely, I can see that each individual scanline is
physically closer together in this mode than in standard 4:3 mode.

It looks great, but is only possible in display systems (such as CRTs)
which don't actually have fixed, indivisible pixels in the Y axis of
the actual display.  This wouldn't work the same for an LCD, for example.


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