Aspect Ratios on video discs etc

From: Freya (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Aug 31 2006 - 10:42:20 PDT


Someone here just mentioned getting work pillarboxed
to hi-def. This just reminded me of one of the things
I most hate about DVD's.

Why, oh why, oh why, do DVD's only support 16:9 in
anamorphic format!!!

It annoys me so much. It isn't even as if 16:9 is that
common a format in the cinema, and even if it were,
why not just support any anamorphic ratio. Surely it
just means passing different numbers to the
desqueezing algorithym. It has to do the same thing
for 16:9 so you just tell it to unsqueeze by a
different amount!

If they could do this then you could support 16:9,
1:1.185 1:2.39 or whatever aspect ratio!

A video I've been working on is an unusual aspect
ratio. I have to letterbox it to 16:9 and I just don't
really see why.

I would like to believe that this would be better with
blue-ray or hd-dvd but I suspect it will be worse and
we will have to pillarbox our 4:3 as well as letterbox
our other formats. Can you tell us what the situation
will be with blu-ray Pip?

love

Freya

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