Cool News
"Babylon 5" on DVD !!!
Glen here...
...with some news that has been a long time coming.
Even as the Babylon 5 franchise faces an apocalypse of bad luck and lousy timing
(specifically: lagging ratings, the implosion of its spin-off series Crusade, and the
endangerment
of the eagerly awaited Babylon 5 flight simulator game) - there is indication that some life
may
yet be left in The Little Station That Could.
THE BIG PICTURE DVD web site
recently conducted an interview with the development team at Warner Bros. Home Video.
In short, the interview reveals that Warner Bros. DOES have plans to issue Babylon 5 on
DVD. When asked whether or not the DVDs would be issued in the series' organic "aspect ratio"
(each episode of B5 and Crusade is filmed in a special widescreen ratio which will
ultimately accommodate their transition to HDTV broadcasting), the team indicated no decisions have
been made about this factor yet.
Whether or not this news is happenstantial, coincidental, deliberately scheduled, or just plain
welcome - one thing is for sure: this is a good, good thing to the hordes of B5 fans who have
been holding off on buying laserdisc and video releases of the series' episodes in the hopes that the
show would one day be blessed by the glories of DVD.
To read the good news for yourself, CLICK
HERE to jump to The Big Picture web site. This has been a long time in the making, and many
folks have waited very patiently to see such a hope realized.
While this is a magnificent start, I personally won't be happy at all until I plop a disc into
my player which is letterboxed in the correct ratio. Then, I couldn't be held accountable for
my bodily emissions...
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+ Expand All
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The flight simulator is in trouble? I haven't heard anything about that; does anyone else have more details?
It's good to hear that B5 might be on DVD soon. Looks like I'll need to sink some cash into a player. -
I was holding out, but broke down at Christmas and bought DVD.
I should have acted sooner; you should act now. DVD whips the pants
off tape. Letterbox images are actually clear enough to watch (the loss
if size is fatal to detail on tape). The add-ins of special feature
material is wonderful. The stop and slow action is PERFECT. The zoom
and look-around function is dazzling. In 12 Monkeys, there's a scene
from outside a theatre. Zoom in and you can READ THE POSTERS INSIDE the
lobby; on tape, you'd be lucky to know there were posters. Zoom in on the buildings
in Bladerunner, and see the people inside, walking around. Don't wait any longer. You will
curse every VHS movie you buy from now til you eventually do get a DVD... heed my words. Now, everyone yell in unison: BABYLON 5 IN LETTERBOX! BABYLON 5 IN LETTERBOX! BABYLON 5 IN LETTERBOX! BABYLON 5 IN LETTERBOX! -
This is the video I'd really like to get ahold of. Of all the various blooper reels and previews JMS showed at cons, "Welcome to the Third Age" was the one that best captured the overall feel of the Babylon 5 videonovel!
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I'm sure that the previous poster is correct: DVD will knock your socks off.... but I'm waiting for the recordable DVD, due out in 2000.
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Yipee. The best show on TV finally made it to DVD (hopefully. I don't want to jinx it). I'm certainly hoping that they choose to release it widescreen. I'd love to see it the way it was meant to be seen, especially "In the Beginning." Here's hoping.
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If letterboxed....
-
Well, I would be THRILLED to get B5 on DVD, especially in widescreen format. (I admit that I have not been able to find the lasers and in the absence of widescreen I might not have bought them anyway). I have been buying all the videos, however, even though I already have every episode on tape. It felt like the only way I could send a clear message of my support for the series. I am not a Neilson household, nor is anyone I know, so I do not know how else to send WB a message they will understand. (Will high video sales make them more likely to put out a DVD?) I'm certainly not telling anyone to spend money they don't have, just thinking out loud.
-JOHN -
And to anybody else who may have always wanted to know but was afraid to ask:
"Pan'n'Scan" is the technique used to compensate for the different aspect ratio of TV sets by editing and cropping off the edges of the picture (imagine taking a TV set-dimensioned cut-out of a proportional size and holding it up over a theatre screen -- you would have to move it around a lot to make sure you got as much of the relevant action in the frame at all times). Widescreen/Letterbox format is where they reduce the size of the picture proportionally so that the longest dimension (horizontal) fits entirely within the TV screen -- which means that the shorter dimension (vertical) doesn't reach all the way to the edge, hence the black bars at top and bottom. This format is my preference, I *hate* the idea that there's stuff happening off the edge of the screen that I can't see.
Now, my question is: I have overheard conversations in video stores where people seem to think there is a difference between widescreen and letterbox. Is there anything to this? -
So it seems that they are finally
comming out! Great!
But are these going to be the PAL
(which I believe already exist in
16:9) or NTSC (which will need
converting) format?
I'd prefer PAl for myself, but if
NTSC is the only one Warner will
ever do I'll get those instead.
Having some confirmation that the
PAL will not be released would be
useful.
Whatever - I want the *whole* set
and my money is waiting... :) -
To finish Ranger's question, Babylon 5 is shot in a wider aspect ratio that what is shown on television. This is for five or six years down the road when TV goes digital and everyone will be required to have either a widerscreen TV or a converter. Some of the effects shots were still rendered full frame, but since those are just CGI they can be rerendered realatively quickly. You can see this in the openning credits where they show shots from the series widescreen. Finally, sometime people refer to widescreen and letterboxing as different since there are usually two different aspect ratios that are used: one that is a very narrow bar and one that nearly fills up the screen. The second one is the aspect that digital TV's will be in. I personally tend to use the two interchangeably, but I could be wrong on that.
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Grunter has a point in that Warner Brothers SHOULD do us justice by packing more than one episode on DVD at $14.95. More than one means 4 or 5, am I being ridiculous? No. DVD's can be produced far cheaper than VHS and I for one DO NOT want a whole collection of B5 DVD's that streches into infinity. I would also like to point out that recordable CDROM drives are coming out but are not generally widely used yet in CD duplication. Cd players have been around for a long long time and STILL arent recordable and nobody is really saying anything about it. Instead (and call me a hypocrite) DVD PLAYERS should come with standard recordable VHS recorders just like stereos come with TAPE recorders right now. Combo DVD's and VCR's would be a temp solution to this problem untill recordable DVD's and CD's come out. Why isnt anyone listening?
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It is possible that the people talking about Widescreen vs Letterboxed could have been refering to a really cool feature of DVD that enhances movies for 16x9 tv's.
Letterboxed movies have 2 big black bars on the top and bottom to present the movie in it's orginal aspect ratio. This means that a portion of the resolution available for the movie is taken up by the black bars. This is a good thing believe it or not because while you have less resolution for the movie, you get to see the entire picture.
DVD's can store information in a format enhanced for 16x9 TV's which is sometimes refered to as an Anamorphic or Widescreen version. This kind of transfer can be viewed on a normal TV set with the black bars like a letterboxed version. The awesome part is that the picture will be MUCH more detailed with very little resolution loss if you watch it on a widescreen TV. This is an important consideration because widescreen tv's are becoming more affordable and is part of the HDTV standard which will eventually be adopted, at least I hope so. :) -
Who ever said you had to replace your VHS tapes? You can just stop buying VHS and start buying DVD.
I have VHS, LaserDiscs and DVD. I haven't replaced any of the LDs yet. Someday, maybe, but for now, no. I have replaced some of the VHSs that have worn out though. So I guess you just buy another VHS tape?
BTW, the "extras" now available on DVD are much more that just Spanish audio. Not all DVDs have extras, some just have bios and/or a trailer. But alot more are including comentary, deleted sceens, "making of" films, and DVD-ROM features as well.
I know the DVD users here already know this, but I'd hate for a new person coming to DVD to read your post and think that that's all to DVD.
It's here to stay, not to say VHS will be around for a while yet. I'd give it 10 years or even more, but DVD, or another un-invented technology, will replace VHS. Get used to it. Technology advances, if it didn't, we'd be still using stone tools, and waiting for a lighting strike to make a fire.
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As well, recordable DVD formats exist. Why aren't they being released? The usual - competing standards and Hollywood copyright issues.
DVD looks a lot better than VHS could ever hope to be. It lasts many, many times longer. I can't wait to get some cash so I can purchase a DVD-ROM, myself... -
Ok....I've resisted writing this for a long time. I've posted my feelings about the pleasures of LD's over DVD's and Leteerbox/Widescreen over Pan&Scan, but I don't think I've ever said it quite this way:
DVD IS HORRIBLE!!!! I'm frankly astonished that anyone can watch DVD's. The artifacting is unbelievably noticeable. Especially on HDTV's. I never really tore into DVD before because I'd always had the misfortune of catching it on misaligned projection TV's and gave it the benifit of the doubt assuming that the TV was the limiting factor. No more. Having seen DVD on both regular CRT display's, PC Monitor's (with a full fledge high grade decoder), and HDTV; I can say without reservation that DVD is unbeleviabley bad. I'd rather lose 200 lines vertical res than have to deal with DVD's nasty ass artifacting. How can anyone marvel at a format with blocky chunks of color on any gradient surface. Now admitedly on a smaller TV from a distance of 8-10ft DVD looks nice. But on a bigger screen or up close (under 8ft) DVD's artifacting is as noticable as the MPEG-1 video used in the Wing Commander III PC game (before anyone tries to correct me I know that WC3 used a proprietary engine for the compression, but it behaved just like MPEG-1 and from what I gathered from Richard Garriot and Chris Roberts, it basically was a modified MPEG-1 standard). So, yes, believe it or not I'd rather have lower res VHS (despite the fragility of the format) over a DVD.
But there is another option. Frickin' LD!!! Laser Disc has been around as long as VHS and yet falls short of DVD's res by only 25 lines vertical and who's high compression format (CLV) is much crisper than DVD. NO FLIPPING ARTIFACTS!!!!! And who's no/low compression format (CAV) is beyond compare in the consumer grade market. The only thing DVD has going for it are little "extra" twiddle tools that only amuse the truly insipid and (IMNSHO) can ruin the intended effect of a film. If you want an "interactive movie" go play Half-Life, film is meant to be a passive experiance (or at least unalterable, midnight showing's a rarely "passive"). But that aside the one main FACT remains; DVD has VERY noticable artifacting. Now I can respect anyone who says that it doesn't bother them, but anyone who claims that DVD is nicer looking than LD is out of there minds... (rant rant rant)
As for the earlier question/post concerning the differences between Letterbox/Widescreen/Anamorphic? They are all the same with one notable qualifier. Letterbox describes the effect of displaying a Widescreen film on the 1:35to1 aspect ratio of your average TV. Anamorphic is the original format that the film was shot in and creates the "stretched head" effect that one can see in the television presentations of Mad Max or Die Hard. Anamorphic is used in combination with a special lens to allow widescreen films to be shot with a single camera. If you see certain old "Cinearama" films in letterbox/widescreen you can often see join lines which was due to the need for three projectors to create the widescreen effect before anamorphic. The one advantage of DVD's MPEG format is that it is inherently manipulatable and thus it is possible to release films in anamorphic on DVD and allow the decoder to decide on the proper aspect ratio for a particular CRT/TV, etc. Any how, that's my rant. Flames welcome. DVD just plain sucks. -
In a word this is why you cannot buy a DVD recorder today and a CD (music) recorder that isn't part of a computer system. The recording industry basically killed digital tape recording for just this reason. The reason DVDs were not recordable from the very first day was that the movie industry would sue the crap out of any consumer electronics company that shipped one without some sort of piracy controller in it. The fact that Sony happens to be both kinds of company is no coincidence, either.-------- And let's face it, this is all about money. Digital TVs cost $10K if you can find one. There is a glorious future out there for movie buffs who want to see this stuff at home (not to mention B5 fans!)... but the format wars ain't even started yet, mark my words.
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OK, let's see if we can cruise through all these comments one by one:
SPACE SIM VIDEO GAME
The division of Sierra responsible for producing the game was disbanded a month or two ago. They were offered jobs back at the home office in Washington, but apparently nobody wanted to move there from California. So the game will have to be finished by people who haven't worked on it at all, basically.
RECORDABLE DVD
Yup, and nobody bought a CD player until the recordable format came out. . . SHEESH Here's the best analogy I can give you: DVD is to videotape what CD is to audiotape. It's much better-sounding. It's more durable. It'll last longer. But it's going to be expensive to record on for a long time. So keep your tape to record your TV and radio shows, and use the discs for posterity.
PAN N SCAN
BABYLON 5 is not really shown in pan n scan. It's been filmed in widescreen format all along with a view towards being shown 1.33:1. There really isn't any panning and scanning going on: The TV image is the middle box on the camera.
From what I hear, CRUSADE is being filmed with more of an eye towards widescreen TVs. In other words, some stuff probably will be missing on the screen when you see it on TV, until the letterboxed versions come out, either on HDTV or DVD.
CHANGING FORMATS:
I think DVD will last for a while. Records lasted for a long time. Tapes have lasted for 20 years now or so and will probably still be around for a long time. CDs have been going for 15+ years. DVDs have been around only 2 so far, but will be here for just as long. Laser Discs never took off, for whatever reason. (I can tell you the price had to have been a big turn off, and people wouldn't like those large discs, either, in an age where they've replaced their records with CDs and audiotapes.)
Changing and improving formats are a way of life. Sorry to say, but the perfect format will most likely never exist. So we deal with change being a fact of life.
NO LUCAS/SPIELBERG MOVIES
Aside from the lunacy that these two men will make or break a format, please be aware that they're coming. Dreamworks just started putting out discs in the past few months. AMISTAD and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN are coming this year, probably in the summer. The INDIANA JONES trilogy is being prepared now for Christmas, as is the STAR WARS trilogy, in all likelihood.
And TITANIC will be here before the end of the year, too, most likely, as the DVD-18s are finally produced.
PRICE POINT
You're probably not going to get 4 episodes on a DVD for $15, and definitely not with letterboxed episodes. Those letterboxed episodes will have to be converted back from PAL to NTSC format, which will be expensive. I'd bet on two episodes per disc for $20. Not unreasonable especially if you purchase them on-line for about 33% off. Manufacturers are always interesting in selling product. Putting a whole season of a show out on 5 DVDs is not as appealing to their bottom line as is putting them out on 10 or 11. JMS might do some select commentaries, and some blooper reel stuff on the season finale discs would be nice.
DVD SUCKS
I have no idea what you're talking about. Nobody I've ever talked to has had those problems with granularity or artifacting. Not even LaserDisc people. What disc are you watching? I freely admit there have been some less-than-perfect DVDs made, but there are many many more terrific ones. I've watched DVDs on 15" and 19" computer monitors and on mid-size 23" and 27" TVs. They all look pretty damned good to me.
-Augie -
Exactly. I too have no idea what the previous poster is talking about. Yes, I guess if the only demo he's seen is Stargate or Twister, yep their are artifacts there. But take a look at The new 007 SE or Rush Hour. I have an Elite DVD and a Elite LD (Pioneer) and I viewing this on a 46" RPTV, and I've never seen the color quality on LD like I see on DVD. I guess if I was viewing this on a 20K CRT with a 5K Delite screen and 30K of theater equipment, maybe theirs an issue. But I don't have that kind of stuff. I will agree with the issues that maybe artifacts are not as noticable to some. I have DSS, and after awhile you get used to the "artifacs", but they are very semdom. So maybe I'm just zoneing them out. But I have plenty of LD that look like shit, the colors are pale in compairison to the DVD. The DVD is just better for me. I love my LDs. Hell, I have more money in the 60 or so LDs than the 100+ DVDs I have, but I like the DVD look. And I have to say this again to the nay sayers of DVD about the extras. Do you people even look at the extras on some of these disc? The outperform the LD 10-1. I don't know how many times I was disapointed that the LD didn't have a trailer, or comentary. At 35-50 for a LD, I want more than a pretty picture. DVD gives me that and more. Now, don't get me wrong, I love the LD. I wouldn't part with my Star Wars box set, or the Abyss or Alien and Aliens SE boxes. The T2 box is one of the best SE out their too. But at $99-$249 for a SE versus $15-$40 for a DVD SE (except maybe Earth to the Moon :-), you can see why people are embrasing this new format. Plus it's made for the masses. LD is/was/will always be a niche market. Well, that's my $.02
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Just one question Soul Slayer how can you live with changing sides and discs? Doesnt this ruin the "Movie Experience"? Just a question.
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"B5" was shot in Super35, the same process Ron Howard used for "Apollo 13" and James Cameron has been using since at least "The Abyss" Super 35 yields a larger image area in a non-standard shape, suitable for framing in more than one way. It allows filmmakers to compose shots for, say 2.35:1 while still "protecting" the 4:3 frame used for TV broadcasts. "B5" was actually framed for exactly 16:9 rather than the 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 theatrical ratios because it was designed for HDTV, which uses 16:9 as a standard ratio because it is a convenient ratio for 4:3, 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 material. As far as I know, "Crusade" was filmed the same way.
"B5" was broadcast in widescreen in Europe, and there may be PAL tapes available. I know that the masters were in PAL format. At one point Warner Bros. used the $1500 per episode costs of transferring the PAL masters into NTSC as an excuse for not doing the LDs in widescreen. Warner Bros. Home Video, which handles US domestic release would have absolutely no reason to release PAL video tapes since that is not the video standard in the U.S.
The whole idea of doing the show widescreen was to make it viable for syndication into the age of HDTV. NONE of the existing video masters is suitable for HDTV, so Warner Bros. is going to have to go back and create new D1 masters from the original film elements at some point anyway. Seems the sensible thing to do would be to do this now and recoup the cost with DVD sales. That essentialy gives them the HDTV masters they'll need in a few years for nothing.
The gent who was ranting about digital artifcats on DVD has either watched the discs on the most badly adjusted monitor in the world or has been smoking something the government disapproves of. I've been collecting films on VHS and Laserdisc for years. I bought a DVD player over two years ago. Arificats of ANY kind are almost uheard of on DVDs. They are certainly less prevalent than the ANALOG artificats present on most laser discs. I have replaced nearly all of my VHS tapes and most of my laserdiscs with DVDs. The picture and sound are better, there are no annoying side breaks or disc swaps (except in rare cases like "Gone with the Wind" and "The Ten Commandments") And they cost about 1/2 what a typical LD goes for. (Or less. The current "1941" special edition costs less than 1/3 of the LD boxed set that it duplicates.) On a properly adjusted monitor (I have a Toshiba widescreen RPTV) they simply blow away laserdisc. This is especially true of anamorphic widescreen.
About anamorphic. Unfortunately the same word, meaning about the same thing, is used in two contexts that have nothing to do with one another. Anamorphic as it applies to shooting and projecting motion picture film has been described above. But in DVD terms anamorphic widescreen has nothing to do with the format of the original film. It is simply a way of processing the image on the disc so that it can produce the highest-quality picture on the 16:9 ratio televisions that are the coming standard. Like the photographic process, DVD's electronic "anamorphic" processes "squeezes" the image in from the sides, producing people and things that look too tall and too thin. A 16:9 television is equipped to "unsqueeze" the image, stretching it to the width of the screen and restoring everything to normal proportions - but with an enormous gain in perceived resolution because less screen real estate is given over to the "black bars" of letterboxing. (The amount of resolution gained varies with the aspect ratio of the film, 1.85:1 movies gaining the most, 2.35:1 movies not quite as much. A 2.35:1 movie on a 16:9 set has letterboxing bars slightly smaller than a 1.85:1 film exhibits on a standard 4:3 set.)
This type of anamorphic processing can also be done on laserdiscs. I am told this is common in Japan, where both LD as a format and 16:9 televisions are more popular than in the states. I myself have one anamorphic LD, "The Fugitive", a promotional pressing included with my widescreen TV. This is far and away the best looking laserdisc in my collection. The problem is, I can't lend it to a friend because it is pretty much unwatchable on a 4:3 set.
DVD's digital advantage over analog LD video is very apparent in the case of anamorphic processing. An anamorphic DVD will produce a standard letterboxed image on a 4:3 set. You simply tell the DVD player what screen shape you have when you set it up, and it send the appropriate signal to the set - the "tall, skinny" version to a 16:9 set, so that the television can unsqueeze it, or a "downconverted" hard-matted 4:3 letterboxed image to a standard set. DVD can thus offer anamorphic transfers while remaining compatible with 4:3 sets, something LD could never do.
It is true that some players handle the downconversion better than others, and some first generation machines in particular tended to produce slightly "soft" images, but this is a problem with the players, not the medium. There are plenty of reviews and other resources that can steer you to a player that does the downconversion well, so this need not be an issue if you're willing to do your homework.
"B5" would be an excellent candidate for anamorphic widescreen on DVD, and I hope Warner Bros. realizes that. As far as pricing and number of episodes go: DVDs are cheaper to *manufacture* than VHS tapes. But they are more expensive to *produce* The mastering and compression work is time consuming and expensive. Look, blank CDs cost only a few cents to turn out. But when you buy an ablum, you're not paying for the polycarbonate and aluminum, you're paying for the studio time, the song royalties, the caterers - in short you're paying for the music and everything that went into creating it, not the disc itself. Same with DVD.
DVD-18 (two sided, dual-layered) production capacity is *extremely* limited (they've only just perfected the process) and will be tied up with the few theatrical releases and major mini-series that can really benefit from it for a couple of years at least. Nobody is going to be using it to crank out old TV shows.
Odds are that Warner Bros. Home Video will either release two episodes per disc, with the widescreen on one side and the 4:3 version on the other, or they will release four episodes per disc in only widescreen or only 4:3, two eps per side. Either way, if they sell them at around $15 a pop that's about what the tapes go for and around half what the LDs would cost. And DVDs take up less storage space than *either.*
As for recordable - the person who said DVD is to the VCR what the CD is to the cassette deck is absolutely right. If there *were* no home video recording system, lack of recordable DVDs would be a problem. That's one of the reasons VCRs took off and LD didn't. But there are two facts to consider: 1) Most potential DVD buyers already *have* a VCR. You don't have to turn your VCR in when you buy a DVD player, you know. 2) About 85% of the usage of VCRs is watching pre-recorded material - NOT taping. If you have a machine that you mostly use for watching movies, why wouldn't you upgrade to a machine that makes movies look and sound better? Because it can't record? You're not using the machine you do own to record! You can still time-shift "Dawson's Creek" using your VCR.
Recordable DVD isn't going to be what people think it is. It is not going to be a VCR or a camcorder that uses a disc instead of a tape. DVD authoring is a multi-stage process that includes a compression stage that is more a matter of art than of science. Anyone who thinks they are going to have a handy home device that will slap two-hours of full-motion, high quality video with stereo sound onto a disc in realtime by next year is dreaming. DVD-R is going to be a lot more like CD-R than it is like a Sony HandiCam, at least for the immediate future. So there's nothing to be gained by waiting for it. It isn't going to do what you want anyway.
In its first two years DVD has outsold laserdisc, CD and the VCR during the same period in their product lauches. There are already nearly 3,000 (non-porn) titles available on DVD - far less than LD and VHS, of course, but those two formats had a TWENTY YEAR headstart. 3,000 titles in two years is actually pretty impressive. And the release rates are increasing. Don't forget that for the first 18 months of the format several studios refused to enter the DVD market *at all.* Fox and Paramount have only been producing discs for a few months. But by next year all of the "Trek" films will be out, "Indiana Jones" is expect around Christmas, the "Aliens" films are coming soon - I've already pre-ordered them - and both the "Star Wars Trilogy" and "The Phantom Menace" are expected before year end - probably in time for the holiday shopping season. And many studios have made a real effort to include classic "catalog" titles among the new releases. Can you say "Casablanca", "Gone with the Wind", "High Noon", "Psycho" (Hitchcock's), "West Side Story", "Vertigo" and "My Fair Lady"? I have every one of them on DVD. No catalog films? Huh?
If new releases continue at the current rate, DVD will have as many titles in print as LD within two to four years. Not bad, not bad at all, especially since new titles are still being released on LD (though this will gradually cease as LD sales continue to dwindle.)
Just thought some of the folks around here might want some of the *facts* about DVD.
Regards,
Joe -
DO NOT TEASE ME! Nothing ever seems to go right for Babylon 5 (at least not in the long run) but if there was ever one thing that I was praying wouldn't get screwed up, this is it. Half the the reason I bought my DVD player was that sooner or later Star Wars wil be released in all it's glory, the other half was an impossible dream of B5 on DVD. This is a message for Warner Bros. - I don't care what it costs... just do it right the first time!
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The B5 game has been in development for almost 2 years now. As of last week's GDC, all they had finished was the ability to fly around in your Starfury and shoot harmless projectiles at all the beautiful models created by Foundation Imaging many years ago.
It was a killer 3D card demo, but there's no game there yet. I'd say it's time to start a dead pool on the sucker.
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Maybe I can help a bit re: anamorphic. The idea is, "put all the frame info in the frame, and damn the aspect ratio, and let God sort em out."
Where GOd is the display device. View an "anamorphic" version of a movie on a standard TV, and everybody is Twiggy... too tall and skinny. But everything is on the screen.
Smart wide-format TV sets can streach that skinny pic into the proper width, restoring the proper roundness to everyone. Without waste. You see, a letterboxed disc version shows
the whole width in the frame, but keeps the aspect ratio correct, so round things look round on a normal TV, but all the data that COULD have been used in the resulting balck bands
above and below the image is WASTED. Wasted bandwidth that cannot be reclaimed. Available data space filled with BLACK. No, show a letterbox disc on a wide screen display, and you can blow the whole image
up to fill the screen and have the right aspect again, but you have thrown away all that black area... that could have held image data. So the anamorphic version delivers more image data
per frame than a letterbox, that means that your resulting image on a wide screen display will have more detail with anamorphic discs. BTW, the anamorphic lens used to film wide moveis on standard film is the
same IDEA but is not technically related to the processes that creat an anamorphic disc. As for recordable DVD, I enjoyed fab CD audio for 12 years before I got a recordable audio CD. I enjoyed
years of TV and movies before I got a VCR. If you want to wait for the "final form" of any technology before you buy, you never buy. Nobeody forced me to replace my LP's, and I didn't replace many. But
I damn well sure never bought vinyl again once I had a CD player. And I like it. Your milage may vary. You may or may not be a raving looney to disagree. -
I haven't heard much from you since you lost the race for governor of Virginia in the early/mid 90's.
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