Originally posted by: ESHBGOriginally posted by: Laserman
ESHBG - It depends what you mean by does it make the picture clearer.
If you have a widescreen TV then the picture will almost definately look better if you create an anamorphic version 'offline' and play that back on your widescreen TV.
The reason is that you can scale a picture well or poorly, or anywhere in between. A widescreen set has to scale a letterbox image to display it properly. This means it has to do it in realtime so it uses a (usually cheap) chipset to do that. The result is usually not that great.
If you use software to make an anamorphic version first, then you can use really good scaling algorithms that would be too complex to do in real time. This means that instead of the image being poorly scaled by the TV, you send it the already (properly) scaled image and so get a better picture.
This is why a lot of people with high end TVs, projectors etc. buy a lumagen, terranex or other high quality 'outboard scaler' because it does a much better job of scaling the input to the display's native resolution and Aspect Ratio than the TV itself is capable of.
If however you were watching in letterbox mode on a standard TV, then an anamorphic version created from the letterbox version may look about the same or actually worse - unless the original letterbox version was overly soft and gained some improvement from any other video processing you did to it during the conversion to anamorphic.
But in absolute terms straight scaling an image from letterbox to anamorphic doesn't automagically add in any lost detail, so doesn't make the picture clearer - but if you need to watch it on a widescreen TV then the image will almost certainly be clearer than watching the letterbox original, unless you use an equally as awful scaling algorithm as the one in your TV.
Thanks a lot for the info, Laserman, it is a HUGE help! Here is something I just said in another thread:
---Well this adds one more monkey wrench into things for me and now I have to see what will happen: I just found out that I CANNOT zoom in on my picture with my TV due to my setup. I just checked the manual and it clearly states that the only settings that can be used when the DVD player is hooked up via component (which mine is) are "Wide" and "4:3" (in addition to those options I have "Panorama", "Zoom1" and "Zoom2"; I was planning on using "Zoom1" to fill the screen more if need be).
Now I am DYING to see what happens when I pop these DVDs in! It seems rather silly for me to not use my component setup just to watch SW, zoom in and get an even crappier picture...
FYI I have a Samsung DLP (16X9 of course) and a DVD player that lets you choose a 16X9 option, so maybe this won't be that big of a deal...maybe my DVD and/or TV will scale the picture as best it can?!?---
So what happens then? Will my TV and/or DVD player scale the letterboxed image to fill more of the screen or will it keep it the same, with rather large black bars on the top/bottom (vs. anamorphic)? I guess I'll just have to wait and see...
Man, I sure wish this release was anamorphic! Then I wouldn't have to worry about any of this crap!