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Apple 17 inch LCD - can you help?
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Junior Member
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Scotland
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I have just bought a 17 inch LCD and it looks great. But I do have a few questions - hope you lot can help.
1) It has no geometry, is this normal?
2) At the top resolution it fill the screen. For all others there is a 'black' area at the top and bottom. Is this normal?
3) As an aside - how do a I play DVDs so they fill the screen instead of a widescreen panel area.
Cheers.
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"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Albert Einstein
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iMac G5 17", 2GHZ
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: Dallas, TX, USA
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1. No geometry is needed since the LCD display is set to fill the screen normally unlike a CRT which acts as a projection screen.
2. I believe this is normal unless the resolution is labeled as being "stretched" where it does fill the screen entirely. Otherwise the other non-stretched and non-native resolutions fill out to what it should be, leaving the rest of the screen black.
3. Since most DVDs are in anamorphic widescreen, it's not wise to see them in full-screen as they will look stretched so I don't know why you wanna see them this way. Otherwise, they will appear widescreen as they should. Try selecting "Fill Screen" or hitting Command + 3 to see if the movie fills the screen and the black bars go away. If a DVD is not anamorphic widescreen and thereby labeled letterbox or just plain widescreen, then the black bars are permanently part of the movie and cannot be removed.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: In bits and pieces on Cloud City
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Originally posted by MChieh:
<STRONG>
3. Since most DVDs are in anamorphic widescreen, it's not wise to see them in full-screen as they will look stretched so I don't know why you wanna see them this way. Otherwise, they will appear widescreen as they should. Try selecting "Fill Screen" or hitting Command + 3 to see if the movie fills the screen and the black bars go away. If a DVD is not anamorphic widescreen and thereby labeled letterbox or just plain widescreen, then the black bars are permanently part of the movie and cannot be removed.</STRONG>
That is not quite true. Even if the movie is anamorphic it will still have black bars. This is because the 17' display has a ratio of 4:3 and DVD movies have a ratio of either 1:85 or 2:35.
The only way you can see the movie fill the screen is to buy DVD's that have the option of "full screen" or "Pan and scan".
If you had the Cinema Display with the ratio of 16:9 then you could watch 1:85 movies full screen and 2:35 full screen if they are Anamorphic and manually stretched with the DVD player software.
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"Curse my metal body, I wasn't fast enough!"
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<Pan and Scan Blows>
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Full Screen = Cropped/Mangled/Zoomed
Why watch 1/2 the dinosaur when you can see the whole thing? If you don't like black bars turn off the lights.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jul 2001
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Originally posted by <Pan and Scan Blows>:
<STRONG>Full Screen = Cropped/Mangled/Zoomed
Why watch 1/2 the dinosaur when you can see the whole thing? If you don't like black bars turn off the lights.</STRONG>
If you watch a 2:35 movie that is not pan and scan on a 27' TV it is not fun stuff. You are only using about half the screen and the rest is dark.
In this case I would take Pan and Scan.
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"Curse my metal body, I wasn't fast enough!"
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: Dallas, TX, USA
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I meant to say that you can program most consumer DVD players to show anamorphic widescreen DVDs full-screen which is not recommended. I never said that you could (or could not) do the same on a Power Mac's software DVD player. Since I never tried such a thing, I only suggested that AlanApple try the Fill Screen feature to see if it would work which I doubt it would've anyway. If it didn't work as guessed, it would confirm the DVD software's inability to show anamorphic DVDs full-screen and due to the 17-inch LCD Apple Studio Display's 4:3 aspect ratio, the black bars will remain. I basically wanted to just discourage filling an anamorphic widescreen DVD to screen without black bars in general because it looks bad.
Of course, now that I've reread the original post, I'm thinking he meant that he wanted to show the movie full-screen with black bars anyways as opposed to watching it on a floating normal-sized window. I guess I read that third question wrong then.
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<Pan and Scan Blows>
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If you watch a 2:35 movie that is not pan and scan on a 27' TV it is not fun stuff. You are only using about half the screen and the rest is dark.
In this case I would take Pan and Scan.
Why? With Pan and Scan on a 2:35 OAR title you miss more than 1/2 the picture. P&S blows. It is an utter waste of a film producer's/distributor's time to make this junk.
All your P&S titles will soon have grey bars on the sides with the next purchase of your TV. Why waste your money now.
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<nana3>
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Having a 27" screen filled completely with half the actual image is not a good experience IMO. If you turn the lights off you can't see the black bars. Makes me sick watching 4:3 TV when I have already seen the full frame ratio version on DVD.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: In bits and pieces on Cloud City
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Originally posted by <Pan and Scan Blows>:
<STRONG>
All your P&S titles will soon have grey bars on the sides with the next purchase of your TV. Why waste your money now.</STRONG>
I already own a 40' widescreen HDTV for 2 years. Pan and scan movies are stretched to fill the screen without the bars and it looks ok.
I hate pan and scan on a proper TV such as mine. But with small TV's most of the American public and kids want to watch it full screen. They don't care that they are missing some extra in the background, they want more picture.
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"Curse my metal body, I wasn't fast enough!"
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<nana3>
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Pan and scan movies aren't "stretched" to fill the screen. The original ratio is telecined left to right and up and down to follow the main centre of action.
If mom+pop+kids want to see pan+scan why are the studios producing almost all dvds in widescreen? Thank god they do.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: In bits and pieces on Cloud City
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Originally posted by <nana3>:
<STRONG>Pan and scan movies aren't "stretched" to fill the screen. The original ratio is telecined left to right and up and down to follow the main centre of action.
If mom+pop+kids want to see pan+scan why are the studios producing almost all dvds in widescreen? Thank god they do.</STRONG>
Um if you are referring to my comment you are wrong. I said that on MY widescreen pan and scan is stretched to fill the screen. It does as I have the option to.
You are also wrong about all DVD's being in widescreen. Almost all kids movies are P&S. You can read about one P&S debate just this week with Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory.
"Congrats to all those who voiced their opinions and started petitions... in this case, it worked. But hopefully, in the future, consumers won't have to start a petition to get every single Family Entertainment title in widescreen!"
HBO even broadcasts HDTV movies in P&S when the very definition of HDTV is widescreen. They do this as they have a high consumer demand P&S as almost nobody has widescreen TV's.
Ugly but true.
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"Curse my metal body, I wasn't fast enough!"
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<Pan and Scan Blows>
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Almost all kids movies are P&S. You can read about one P&S debate just this week with Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory.
Far from it. Only Pokemon, The Secret of Nihm, and a select others are in P&S.
WS or OAR 4:3:
All Disney's minus Extremely Goofy Movie
Iron Giant
Titan AE
Stuart Little
All Pixar Films (Toy Story, Bugs' Life)
All Dreamworks Films (El Dorado, Antz, Prince of Egypt, Small Soldiers)
and
Almost every other DVD title as well
Note also that there were many thousands that signed the petition in favor of OAR for Wonka, yet there has never been such a demoand for films released only in WS. DIVX lost, Wonka lost, and the P&S myth will die soon enough. Once you experience WS you never go back.
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<mugwump1>
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Well, it's obvious that the best solution is for a good director to compose the shot with the letterbox "matte" looking good for the theaters, but also keep the space above and below looking fine for any standard home release. Then for the home release, they just remove the black "matte" bars.
For example, Total Recall was cropped for the theater widescreen, then opened up for the home release, which is better than Pan und Scan and better than Letterbox. Sure it increases headroom OR belt room or both, but then you're actually seeing more frame image at home than in the theater. Possibly T2 is the same way, with the home 4:3 view showing more than the letterbox version.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Aug 2001
Status:
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The reason for the black bars is because the native aspect ratio of the 17" display is 5:4 (1280x1024) and the 'normal' ratio for computer displays is 4:3 (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, etc.) My new Samsung has the same aspect and native resolution, but it has an option to expand and fill the screen, even though you get some distortion due to the funky aspect ratios.
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