Originally posted by: Grinder
Hmm... but isn't it right that anamorphic just contains more information in the vertical dimention. How can that look less good then an image containing less information (on a regular TV-screen). It seems logical that it would look at least as good. I bought this TV just a month ago btw, before that I also had a 21" regular TV, but I've never experienced anamorpic DVD's looking different from non-anamorphics. It seems to me you just don't notice it being anamorphic on a regular TV, but do notice it on a bigger screen. Or am I missing something here?
Hmm... but isn't it right that anamorphic just contains more information in the vertical dimention. How can that look less good then an image containing less information (on a regular TV-screen). It seems logical that it would look at least as good. I bought this TV just a month ago btw, before that I also had a 21" regular TV, but I've never experienced anamorpic DVD's looking different from non-anamorphics. It seems to me you just don't notice it being anamorphic on a regular TV, but do notice it on a bigger screen. Or am I missing something here?
You're absolutely correct in your assumption that anamorphic images contain more vertical resolution than their letterbox counterparts and that produces a better image on a widescreen television. No questions asked. However there is no gain any horizontal resolution. It's merely "stretched" on a 16x9 monitor. Because the DVD standard must accomodate 4x3 televisions, we're stuck in this rather pitiful resolution rut of 720 lines.
What would be ideal, and this is what I was talking about before, would be to have native 16:9 images not squished 4x3 pictures. 16:9 images...in High Def! Ah! Bring on Blu-Ray!
Why letterbox is better on 4x3 televisions: When DVD players take anamorphic material and show it on a 4x3 television, they get rid of every 4 lines of resolution. While this may not be too badly noticible with professional DVDs, the Star Wars bootlegs are created from letterboxed masters with inferior resolution compared to DVD, and it's better just to get the letterbox master if you have a 4x3 television than to take an upconverted anamorphic video image and then have its resolution hacked to pieces again.
Understnad?