S2 on a widescreen TV

[rhermoso]

I have an S2 with movies recorded both in letterbox format and regular full-screen (off HBO and such). What can I expect them to look like if upgrade my tv from a 4:3 to as 16:9? Will the letterbox show up as a full screen? Will the full-screen movies that now take up all of a 4:3 screen remain in 4:3 or does the S2 capture the missing sides of a movie (ex. Goodfellas off HBO is fullscreen on a 4:3 tv; is it 16:9 on a widescreen tv?).

I can live without HD for now but would like to get the 16:9 aspect ratio on movies and DVDs.

Thanks

[carwasher44]

Great post buddy

[gastrof]

I have an S2 with movies recorded both in letterbox format and regular full-screen (off HBO and such). What can I expect them to look like if upgrade my tv from a 4:3 to as 16:9? Will the letterbox show up as a full screen? Will the full-screen movies that now take up all of a 4:3 screen remain in 4:3 or does the S2 capture the missing sides of a movie (ex. Goodfellas off HBO is fullscreen on a 4:3 tv; is it 16:9 on a widescreen tv?).

I can live without HD for now but would like to get the 16:9 aspect ratio on movies and DVDs.

Thanks

If something was recorded in 4x3 format, it'll stay that way. That includes widescreen movies that are letterboxed.

Letterboxed movies will show up on a widescreen TV with black bars on ALL sides, because the 4x3 image (including the black bars) will appear in the center of the widescreen display, with bars on the side to fill in the rest of the screen.

People sometimes will use a "zoom" feature on their widescreen sets to blow the image up so the small "letterbox" will fill the widescreen display, but by making a small picture bigger, you risk distortion.

As for movies run on HBO, if HBO ran a movie as 4x3, it's 4x3. Period. That's all there was for the TiVo to record.

Some have experimented with their TiVo, and have found that if you feed a widescreen video signal from a digital tuner into their TiVo (downconverted to standard def, naturally, but still widescreen), the TiVo will record the widescreen image, and it'll fill up a the whole widescreen display (in standard def) if played into a widescreen TV. Downside? That same recording will appear distorted ("squeezed") if played into a 4x3 TV.

[parzec]

Great post buddy

OP, Ignore this A** Hole's response and put him on your ignore list like everybody else.

To answer your question, the S2 does nothing to adjust the output of the video on a 16:9 set. It doesn't rescale the main Tivo screen and it doesn't automaticially vertically stretch 16:9 content.

[Stormspace]

OP, Ignore this A** Hole's response and put him on your ignore list like everybody else.

To answer your question, the S2 does nothing to adjust the output of the video on a 16:9 set. It doesn't rescale the main Tivo screen and it doesn't automaticially vertically stretch 16:9 content.

This is correct as well as the previous post about the HDTV. The "zooming" options on my HDTV are actually presets like

Letterbox-enlarges image without stretching. For wide screen DVD's I still get a small black bar at the top and bottom of the screen. Wide Screen TV shows fill the screen.

Wide-Stretches image at the sides more than in the middle. The result is a full 16:9 screen. People tend to look fat.

4:3 - Black bars on the sides. This tends to make your 42" HD set the same as a 30" SD set in screen size. I never use it.

Fill - This is a straight out stretch to fill the screen and introduces the most distortion while keeping everything on the screen.

Anamorphic - This stretches the image so much you can't even see it. In most cases the image is stretched off screen. Still wondering what the application for this is. It's possible it's either a discontinued format, or it's one none of my other equipment supports at this time.

Hope that helps.

[PhillyGuy]

This is correct as well as the previous post about the HDTV. The "zooming" options on my HDTV are actually presets like

Letterbox-enlarges image without stretching. For wide screen DVD's I still get a small black bar at the top and bottom of the screen. Wide Screen TV shows fill the screen.

Wide-Stretches image at the sides more than in the middle. The result is a full 16:9 screen. People tend to look fat.

4:3 - Black bars on the sides. This tends to make your 42" HD set the same as a 30" SD set in screen size. I never use it.

Fill - This is a straight out stretch to fill the screen and introduces the most distortion while keeping everything on the screen.

Anamorphic - This stretches the image so much you can't even see it. In most cases the image is stretched off screen. Still wondering what the application for this is. It's possible it's either a discontinued format, or it's one none of my other equipment supports at this time.

Hope that helps.

Actually, anamorphic is my favorite option for viewing 4:3 programs on a 16:9 TV. It's call panoramic on my TV set and it introduces the least amount of distortion. It does minimal stretching to the center of the picture so that people (which tend to be in the center anyway) don't look overly bloated.

[Steve_Martin]

Actually, anamorphic is my favorite option for viewing 4:3 programs on a 16:9 TV. It's call panoramic on my TV set and it introduces the least amount of distortion. It does minimal stretching to the center of the picture so that people (which tend to be in the center anyway) don't look overly bloated.

This is the mode we use too for all SD content. Panasonic calls it 'just'.

The only side effect is that the news ticker crawls look like they are on a convex surface.

[Stormspace]

Actually, anamorphic is my favorite option for viewing 4:3 programs on a 16:9 TV. It's call panoramic on my TV set and it introduces the least amount of distortion. It does minimal stretching to the center of the picture so that people (which tend to be in the center anyway) don't look overly bloated.

Yeah, that's "Wide" on mine and the one I use when not watching a widescreen show like BSG or Smallville. Anamorphic takes that 4:3 image and stretches and compresses the image. I end up with a thin image stretched off screen on both sides when I use Anamorphic. What's funny about wide is when those scrolling messages go across the bottom the words at the edges travel faster than the ones in the middle. kind of a fish bowl effect without the visual distortion.

[rhermoso]

Thanks all for the responses. I'm just curious what my existing recorded content will look like on a new hd widescreen tv. Considering tivo is recording the program as it comes in off the cable and before it hits the tv, wouldn't it record whatever form the cable company is delivering. So are those movies on HBO that are full screen actually widescreen when viewed with the appropriate tv? And will watching those movies recorded off an S2 show up as widescreen?

[TydalForce]

This may help:

http://www.cnet.com/4520-7874_1-5108580-4.html

Scroll down to the photos of the football player guy, you can see pictures of what the different modes might look like on your TV

[Stephen Tu]

wouldn't it record whatever form the cable company is delivering.
Exactly. The Tivo records what the cable sends, and all your existing Tivo stuff is 4:3 content; whether it is letterboxed or not it is a 4:3 picture. Letterbox just means part of the 4:3 picture is the black bars. It will still be 4:3 when it is sent to a widescreen TV. Widescreen TVs have many different zoom modes to display 4:3 content.

Nearly all of them have a completely non-distorting zoom mode that is nearly perfect for 4:3 letterboxed material; this will crop off the letterbox bars & fill the screen with shows like "Battlestar Galactica", "ER", "Sopranos" that are broadcast in letterboxed 4:3 on the non-HD channels. You probably lose a little picture on the edges due to overscan & a because most TVs zoom a bit too much. But not enough to be a huge issue.

For 4:3 fullscreen content, you have to either watch with pillarbox side bars, or choose your poison between cropping top/bottom, distortion, or some combination of the two.

To get true 16:9 content, which can be viewed simply in the 16:9 "full" mode (exact mode name varies between brands) of your TV without zooming (& therefore better resolution), you need either true HD content (HD broadcast, over OTA/cable/satellite, with the appropriate tuner, or HD-DVD/Blu-ray), or a DVD player set to 16:9 output mode with "enhanced for 16:9" DVDs (aka "anamorphic"). Most widescreen DVDs are 16:9 enhanced these days but one still runs into 4:3 letterboxed DVDs occasionally. These must be zoomed just like letterboxed TV broadcasts.

Full-screen movies on the std HBO channels & stuff are horrible on a widescreen IMO so I have never subscribed. Even the HD on the HD-HBO is compromised since they often crop 2.35:1 movies to 1.78:1. I recommend Netflix instead, then you always get the entire movie without any cropping hack jobs. HBO et al are only worth it IMO if you like their original series/movies, & even those you can just get through Netflix when they come out on DVD if you are willing to wait for awhile.

[delvxe]

Some have experimented with their TiVo, and have found that if you feed a widescreen video signal from a digital tuner into their TiVo (downconverted to standard def, naturally, but still widescreen), the TiVo will record the widescreen image, and it'll fill up a the whole widescreen display (in standard def) if played into a widescreen TV. Downside? That same recording will appear distorted ("squeezed") if played into a 4x3 TV.

This is exactly what I want to try to do. Can anyone tell me how this is done? I want to be able to pick up the widescreen OTA boradcasts of shows like ER and 24 and have them fill my widescreen HDTV. I don't care about not having the HD picture quality. Can anyone point me to how this is done? Can my television act as the digital tuner downsample to my Tivo?

Thanks,
Terry
Seattle, WA

[TiVo Troll]

Letterboxed movies will show up on a widescreen TV with black bars on ALL sides, because the 4x3 image (including the black bars) will appear in the center of the widescreen display, with bars on the side to fill in the rest of the screen.

People sometimes will use a "zoom" feature on their widescreen sets to blow the image up so the small "letterbox" will fill the widescreen display, but by making a small picture bigger, you risk distortion.
---
Some have experimented with their TiVo, and have found that if you feed a widescreen video signal from a digital tuner into their TiVo (downconverted to standard def, naturally, but still widescreen), the TiVo will record the widescreen image, and it'll fill up a the whole widescreen display (in standard def) if played into a widescreen TV. Downside? That same recording will appear distorted ("squeezed") if played into a 4x3 TV.

The widescreen TV itself (for a reader like delvxe who doesn't yet have one) is what ZOOMS an image presented in a letterboxed format formatted for a 4x3 TV.

The problem with ZOOMING a 16x9 letterboxed image which doesn't fill a 16x9 screen in any direction isn't that it will necessarily appear distorted. On flatscreen technologies it will fill the screen undistorted, BUT because such an image originally only consisted of approx. 360 lines of vertcal resolution it will still only have that much resolution. Therefore it will be the proper size but will have only 3/4ths the resolution of and look correspondingly less detailed than standard-def:

Hi-def (1080i) on 16x9 ratio display = 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels (on flatscreen technology, not CRT).

Hi-def (720p) on 16x9 display = 1280 by 720 pixels

Standard-def on 4x3 display = 640 pixels by 480 pixels

ZOOMED image (letterboxed for 4x3) on 16x9 display = 480 by 360 pixels = (fuzzy image!)