Originally posted by: Laserman
I am in two minds about converting to Anamorphic.
The only real advantage to Anamorphic is when it is shot in Anamorph as you get more resolution on screen.
By converting a non-anamorphic source to anamorphic, you are not increasing the resolution, in fact you are adding a level of processing that can only degrade the image, so I will do some testing, but I can't see an adavantage to it at this stage.
I am in two minds about converting to Anamorphic.
The only real advantage to Anamorphic is when it is shot in Anamorph as you get more resolution on screen.
By converting a non-anamorphic source to anamorphic, you are not increasing the resolution, in fact you are adding a level of processing that can only degrade the image, so I will do some testing, but I can't see an adavantage to it at this stage.
I didn't notice any quality degradation when I did test comparing 4:3 to 16:9 encodes. There may be a slight loss of quality, but it wasn't enough for me to notice. The advantage to doing 16:9 is that the image will be displayed properly on a 16:9 TV. Some 16:9 TV's are better than others at doing the image conversion. My menus are 4:3 on my current discs because there was no way I knew of to make a 16:9 menu that would display correctly on my 4:3 TV. I went to a couple of stores and tried out my disc on a few 16:9 TV's. The image of the video was displayed correctly on all three since my video was encoded 16:9. However, only one TV displayed my menu automatically without bars on the sides and without stretching it out of proportion. One showed the menu with bars on the sides and the last one stretched the image out of proportion.
Check out the huge Star Wars thread at DVDrHelp. Just about everyone there is doing 16:9. There was a huge discussion and debate going on at one time which was better. Those who had 16:9 TV's were not happy with the way their 4:3 encodes turned out, but they were happy when they went back and redid them in 16:9.
Notice I didn't say Anamorphic. I sometimes refer to 16:9 as Anamorphic, but we are not doing true Anamorphic here since we do not have the equipment to do that with. You are right that you do not gain vertical resolution, but I believe the degradation is also so tiny because you are not blowing up the image that much.
I also wouldn't be doing 16:9 if I hadn't already tried doing 4:3 and comparing the two to see which I liked better. I noticed no difference between the two on my 4:3 TV, so I'm sticking with 16:9 since I will eventually own a 16:9 TV.
Finally, if you are seriously considering taking footage from the upcoming DVD's, they are 16:9.
Patrick