Originally posted by: Moth3r
- so should we refer to a 4:3 letterboxed DVD as "isomorphic" then?
No, 4:3 discs are anamorphic, too! At least in the strictest sense of the term they are. Clearly not in popular terms...
Do the math: 720 x 480 is 3:2, so it doesn't match either 4:3 or 16:9. PAL's the same: at 720 x 576, you're looking at 5:4.
Originally posted by: MeBeJedi
But in film terms, an anamorphic transfer is where the picture is shrunk (visually compressed?) into a smaller frame. When applied to DVDs, it is incorrect usage of the established terminology.
- so should we refer to a 4:3 letterboxed DVD as "isomorphic" then?
No, 4:3 discs are anamorphic, too! At least in the strictest sense of the term they are. Clearly not in popular terms...
Do the math: 720 x 480 is 3:2, so it doesn't match either 4:3 or 16:9. PAL's the same: at 720 x 576, you're looking at 5:4.
Originally posted by: MeBeJedi
But in film terms, an anamorphic transfer is where the picture is shrunk (visually compressed?) into a smaller frame. When applied to DVDs, it is incorrect usage of the established terminology.
What's not the same? The picture for 16:9 DVDs is shrunk / visually compressed into a smaller frame, too, just like its film counterpart. It's not what we're doing, exactly, because we're starting with stuff that's too small and stretching it vertically to fill the space, but this is just a very special case. Usually, working from an HD master, there's more than enough resolution and the visual compression / shrinking is obvious.