Culturedog has done a fantastic video regarding watching LDs in the correct aspect ratio with modern TVs
Maybe useful to not many here but interesting never the less..


(link updated, please use the youtube highlight when posting)

That's why I wrote this a long time ago...

https://www.lddb.com/help_ratio.php

Julien

Right with ya Julian,
That is a fantastic guide.

Just a friendly reminder to the new crew.

Good, informative vid.

Also, I can never quite understand when I see a comment like "well, it looks fine and is good enough for me".
You've been shown the right way to do it but insist on digging your heels in.

People hate to admit when their wrong, people are far too prideful for their own good.

I knew a guy years ago who was into laserdiscs with a good player & a big flat screen & would always zoom in to lose any black bars on the screen. Any "widescreen" features were taken in so far that often quite a bit of the left & right image was lost, the three way duel at the end of The Good the Bad & the Ugly would have one character on screen & any 4:3 features were ridiculous when he had them on. He referred to any black bars on screen as "wasted screen space" - wtf.

He genuinely was puzzled when he was at mine & watching "wasted screen space".

BTW he was a salesman in a white & brown goods shop & had some nice kit so go figure!

Everyone to their own thing I suppose.

My dad was like that, guy refused to buy widescreen releases on DVD, would only buy fullscreen ones. Watching Star Wars in the correct aspect ratio for the first time and without the special edition changes was fantastic.

Guy was serious about his surround sound setup though, I'd love to have those old receivers.

Edit: I called him up and he has all his old surround sound stuff in the garage, he said I'm welcome to any of it, so that's going to be fun.

45 minutes........... this person needs to learn how to direct or "trim the fat"

Scanned it, wish they showed the image from LD, must have a large collection but no player?

This comment is just....wow.

Rude.

Thoughtless.

Unnecessary.

Rein-O, you're advised to just scroll past things like this if your "input" is nothing more than a derogatory slam. There is no need to comment on every single topic here, as you do. Yes, of course, you're entitled to your opinion as I'm sure you will retort.

When you take the time to shoot, edit and present an informative video to help the community and to further engage new enthusiasts of this format and to help them understand the technology better, please let us know so we can all comment on how crappy we think your video is.

Thanks for sharing your opinion Rein-O!

So you don't think they or you could have done better??

I'm just saying, can't I say?

Just wish they showed an actual TV with an actual LD playing to show on their TV or even computer monitor to show what the image should look like IRL.

If you though I was bashing then yes I guess I was due to the fact
that there is a 45 minute video with a talking head and nothing showing an actual LD image.

There have been other videos I've seen that are worse but they are shorter and do get to the point and actually show what they are supposed to be talking about
IRL.

Just would have been nice to see a worse video showing how things work with an actual monitor and LD, even some early non-anamorphic DVDs have this same issue.

Could have shown how to deal with that too.

Think about this one Kevin, you got me to post a second time on this topic

Was this your video?

Back on topic, rare statement from me lmao !

Ok, when I was first exposed to a " widescreen " visual home theater experience in the early 1990's it was very difficult for me to process mentally.
I found the black bars, no pun here, unsightly and undesirable.

Speed up a few years later, just after joining the Columbia House LaserDisc Club. I would avoid academy ratio aspects if possible when purchasing video media.
I wished the full panoramic view for any and all features.

So my point is, for me initially, the black bars widescreen format was TOTALLY alien.
Took me a bit to come to the "light"

Thanks to jakeheke and Julien for their links......
As a older member I found this informative, and second the idea that for new members "key" to augment their audio / visual experience.

Cheers mates

James

The world needs a really good video on aspect ratios. This isn’t it, but I haven’t done anything at all so I can’t complain much.

If I do do a video about this I won’t use laserdisc players or any video gear at all. I’ll use paper cutouts. In order to break through people’s thick sculls you need to avoid any distractions from technical stuff. The crux is that square pegs don’t fit in rectangular holes and vice versa so you either have matted areas or you lose image or you make the moon an oval, those are the only possible choices. Once people understand what they are aiming for they can figure it out on anything.

It's really not complicated. You want the original aspect ratio for any video content to get the entire picture. It is especially important with highly visual directors but there is no reason to get any cropped release. To do so might require some black bars on a display, get over it because it's infinitely better than lost picture or a stretched picture.

So I get where reino is coming from. This isn't a message that takes 45 minutes to deliver. I'm sure the video is fine and some people will find it useful, it's just not worth my time.

Are there that many people not watching LDs in the proper aspect ratio?

I mean, if people look inhumanly wide and circles look like ovals, that should be a dead giveaway to just about ANYONE that your picture isn't right.

I guess I just expect too much sense from people.

Way too much. The only thing NFL fans and Precious Moments collectors care about is black bars. That’s it. And they *really* don’t want them at ALL. They paid for that screen and they’re going to use every inch of it!

You wouldn't believe how many people just plug things to their video system without fine-tuning ANYTHING.

Ratio is wrong, luminosity/contrast is wrong, the hell'ish 100~240Hz refresh rate is turned on with all DNR enabled at max value.

It's a mess.

Faces are not moving in sync with heads, max resolution is not enabled, sides are stretched, details are either lost in shadows or background noise shows up in over brightness, extra refresh rate makes anything looks like a cheap video recording.

Every time I go around visiting (extended) family and we eventually sit down around a TV screen at some point... I have to battle the nerd in me to not jump to the set and and start tuning it. Trying to avoid a "he's showing off again" reaction. But when I do and suddenly the colors are more natural, the faces ratio is what a normal human person would look like, etc. I get a "Oh... I had no idea you could do that! Thank you."

50% of the job was to choose and buy a TV (usually "bigger is better" regardless of native resolution or options).
40% ... is to go home and install/power/plug it so it displays something.
10% ... make sure the kids' PlayStation/XBox works well.

There's no time budget allowed for picture fine-tuning or calibration.
I bet most people expect their TV set to be fully optimized when leaving the factory.

I'm still trying to make my (quite technically inclined) parents understand the benefits of a video processor but I am losing that battle.
They just like watching movies at my place because "it looks like a movie theater".

Julien

Completely agree with Admin. Most people do not know and/or do not care. Brightness is typically at max. It's the casual market and it is a massive one. This is the market that has mainly moved to Netflix. They probably haven't even noticed the drop in quality that Netflix imposed to save bandwidth due to the pandemic increasing usage. I've talked to various people about AR over the years and I would say the large majority would rather not have black bars. Also, there is a reason that a secondary market of home theater installation exists. Plenty of electronics stores usually offer a service for it, they would be foolish not to. Being on forums like this full of like-minded people it can be easy to lose sight of the vast majority of consumers.

I actually asked my folks about the same thing because they used to have this fairly basic hi-fi unit that nevertheless was modular and was just the kind of thing I needed but the last I ever saw it was in the garage where my dad was still using it...except it was no longer there either and the best response I could get out of them regarding what happened was "it broke".

I'm never going to find out what the hell that meant.

Also I'm gonna have to agree with rein-o on this one, I also got the impression culturedog spends way too much time explaining what should be a reasonably simple concept and inadvertedly makes it sound more complicated than it actually is, and just having proper visual demonstrations of everything would reduce the need to merely talk about it significantly. Then again, the way he talks about the facebook group and the "Aspect ratio police" just makes that place sound like an absolute cesspit.

Social media.

That video is way too long. Here's my attempt at covering the same video:

• Buy a TV
• Buy a Blu Ray player, DVD player, LD player, Photoplasmichypotrophicpsychohologram player or whatever
• Buy some AV gear (optional)
• Connect it all up
• Play some media
• DON'T f**k ABOUT WITH IT!
• End.

Job done.

Haha I am the same as you, Julien.

I go round peoples houses and I have to restrain myself from adjusting their tv settings. I remember I went to my grandads and he basically had it on the factory setting. All features like nr and contrast boost all on max settings. I calibrated it for him and it looked so much better and natural. Only for him to turn around and say, "it's too dark!" Yeah, that's because the brightness contrast and backlight were jacked up so high you couldn't make out any of the detail! Needless to say I put it back how it was. He was happy but I wasnt. At the end of the day it's not my tv so why should I care.

I work as a field based engineer and I'm always in peoples houses. You see them with the latest and nicest TVs mounted on their walls and the picture looks terrible. The motionflow feature that makes every movie look like a soap opera is the worst offender in my eyes.

I remember when I first became aware of aspect ratios and that's when DVD came out. I wasnt fortunate enough in the UK to grow up with Laserdisc. In fact nobody even knew about Laserdiscs back then. It was all about vhs and I had a massive vhs collection which I took great pride in. When I started getting into DVD around 2002 I noticed the black bars and it annoyed me. I used to think to myself, I hate DVDs, my vhs tapes never had this problem! Then I did some research on the internet, which in 2002 for me was revolutionary. Then I discovered the difference between pan and scan and widescreen. After that, the vhs collection I cherished so much left me with such an incomplete feeling. Like I've been collecting the wrong versions of these movies.

I think that's why I got into Laserdisc. Movies were available in widescreen. I remember dabbling with widescreen vhs tapes after the fact. If you think laserdisc has low resolution when zoomed in on a scope image on flat screen. Try a vhs tape. Not viable.

Sometimes if a disc looks really bad I'll watch it window boxed. Definelty can make an improvement. Not a lot of tvs can scale laserdisc properly. That's where a good scaler comes in handy.