Posted by Jay G. on 04/03/06 04:27

On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 13:38:32 GMT, Joshua Zyber wrote:

> > I still think the HD specs missed the boat by not allowing the video to
> > be encoded in *any* aspect ratio and requiring a player to be able to
> > create black bars on the fly for output to both 4:3 and 16:9 aspect
> > ratios.
>
> I agree, and it would also be a huge benefit for those of us running
> 2.35:1 Constant Image Height projection. However, I believe the reason
> they didn't do this is because the HD masters that the studios have been
> striking for several years now use square pixels at 1920x1080p
> resolution, meaning that the master itself only accomodates the 16:9
> ratio and anything else has black bars encoded into the video right at
> the master.

That may be, but just because that's the way they are *now* doesn't mean
you should exclude the option of doing it different later. For example,
anamorphic video didn't hit it big until after DVD included in its spec.
Even then, a lot of earlier title were non-anamorphic because studios were
using existing masters that were 4:3 letterboxed.

-Jay

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