Posted by arie on 01/17/65 11:49

Recently, I have acquired a DVD movie "Mamma Roma" by P.P.Pasolini
issued by Criterion, which is famous for its high-quality digital
remastering of old movie classics. The disk is anamorphic 16:9, and the
image fills the screen of my 16:9 LCD display (BENQ, 32") in the
Full-screen or Anamorphic mode, supposedly undistorted. To my great
disappointment, when the movie gets to slow horizontal panning takes of
a static landscape (there are quite a few of them in the film), I see
gradual distortion of the objects in the frame as they cross the screen
from, say, the right margin to the center and then to the left margin.
This effect is very disturbing to eyes. To assess it quantitatively, I
made the movement pause several times and measured with a ruler the
width of a certain object in different positions on the screen. It
turns out that, compared to their width in the center, the objects are
by 35-40% (!!!) wider near the side edges of the screen. The effect is
the same whether I watch it through a PC (with PowerDVD software) or
through a stand-alone DVD player. However, when I set the display to a
4:3 mode and keep the original aspect ratio of 16:9 (with black bars on
all four sides of the display) the object widening is much smaller
(about 10%), and the eye practically does not discern it. It is clear
that a part of the fault lies in the disk information itself, but a
greater part pertains to other components (decoding software and
hardware? properties of the display?). I should greatly appreciate a
professional explanation. Are there ways to solve this problem? I
should note that I have run a number of other anamorphic disks and
haven't felt this phenomenon, but now I realise that this is because
most of panning scenes are accomponied by movements of dynamic objects
(people, cars, etc.), and this blurs the effect.

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