lpd said:

LexX said:

I assume full frame means no black bars to fill 16:9 image so how does that exactly work on TVs to get it right?

If it is full frame you can select letterbox on your blu ray player and it squishes the picture and adds the black bars.

That would only be true for a DVD source (as the image is stored at a 4:3 ratio - although anamorphically). With an HD source it's a bit more difficult, and probably impossible with most TVs: 1080p material ALWAYS has a 16:9 aspect ratio (1920 x 1080 pixels). The 2.35:1 image of SW would fill an area of 1920 x 817 pixels, so the image would have to be compressed vertically by about 76%, whereas the usual anamorphic-DVD is scaled vertically to about 70% of it's original height.

As far as I know there are no anamorphic Blu-rays - at least none that use it to their advantage (some HDTV-camcorders record at 1440x1080 anamorphically, which gets stretched to 1920x1080 when played back). So I guess TVs don't support this, as there's never a case where they have to. I don't know if it's different with projectors.

When played from a computer though this shouldn't be a problem, as most software players support free scaling of the image.

So still, for archival purposes a full frame 1920x1080-MKV would be the best choice, I guess.