Posted by M.I.5� on 01/10/07 08:22

"Joshua Zyber" <joshzyber@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:Od-dnYjjh6HMCD7YnZ2dnUVZ_revnZ2d@comcast.com...
> "Joshua Zyber" <joshzyber@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:4ICdnczWnNnHDz7YnZ2dnUVZ_tOmnZ2d@comcast.com...
>> "M.I.5�" <no.one@no.where.NO_SPAM.co.uk> wrote in message
>> news:45a350cf$1_1@glkas0286.greenlnk.net...
>>>> The major studios do not release new titles in non-anamorphic
>>>> letterbox format. They just don't. Your insistence that the Dead
>>>> Man's Chest DVD is in this format is borderline delusional. You're
>>>> clearly misunderstanding the readout on your DVD player.
>>>
>>> Well that's what thought to start with and they certainly claim that
>>> they don't. Which is why I copied the .VOB file without the .IFO file
>>> and played that. It is clearly in letterbox.
>
> It occurs to me that you've noticed that this movie is presented in a
> 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Which means that, while the DVD is anamorphically
> encoded, it still has black letterbox bars above and below the 2.35:1
> movie image to fill the 16:9 anamorphic video frame. I bet you're
> confusing this into believing that the disc is non-anamorphic.

No, you missed the problem along the way somewhere. The disk was encoded in
4:3 with the 2.35:1 image in the middle with most of the area being black.
The disk was somehow flagged to instruct the player to output this tiny
image as analogue anamorphic video (I still can't find the flag in the DVD
spec). The reason why I tumbled it was than my pioneer (I actually have 2),
seems to ignore the flag and output the video information exactly as it
appeared on the disk. It played in anamorphic on all my other players (a
Panasonic, a Toshiba and a Kobe).

However, as I posted above, it's all sorted now as HMV obligingly exchanged
the disk for one that is clearly different, in that it works correctly.

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