Page 1 of What is this anamorphic?

What is an anamorphic transfer? I know it has some thing to do with the aspect ratio and stuff but I am just not sure what it is. Could one of you goons please explain before I throw up on my keyboard out of disgust.

Put most simply, when you used to buy widescreen VHS tapes they had a lot of wasted space at the top and bottom full of black bars. What anamorphic DVDs do is take that space and use it to display more picture information instead.

Your widescreen TV set (and a fair few 4:3 ones too) or your DVD player can then convert this vertically stretched (and ultimately higher resolution) image back to its proper aspect ratio.

Thats the non-technical description. ;-)

Anamorphic? Didn`t she used to do the sports news on Sky?

(Sorry, couldn`t resist that one 8o))

Right I dig. So its like widescreen-fullscreen, yes?
Yes my tv has a widescreen button. Its funny ha he ho hu huh yes....

One question, Blazing. Is your telly one of these widescreen beasties, or a bog-standard 4:3?

Have a look at this link - hope this clears the carrots from your keyboard

http://www.dvdweb.co.uk/information/anamorphic.htm

My Tosh 4.3 TV has this 16.9 button but the image displayed is the incorrect ratio ( people are tall & skinny) Is this correct?

Aha thanks. It all makes sense now....

I have a 14" 4:3 telly on weekdays and if im lucky I can put my player in the livingroom and get a 24" also 4:3 telly, connected to a stereo for mucho-basso...

I love you guys.....

Ahhhh, there`s your problem, Blazing. Us poor souls who can`t afford to splash out on a 50 inch widescreen telly can`t see a hell of a lot of improvement in a widescreen picture, because 4:3 tellies that are "widescreen enabled" simply reduce the scanning of the picture to scrunch the picture down so it`s in the correct format. For us, there`s bugger all difference between an anamorphically enhanced picture and a plain-vanilla mask-down. Now, widescreen tellies s-t-r-e-t-c-h the picture in the other direction so that instead of the vertical number of lines reducing (like they do on 4:3 sets), the vertical resolution stays the same but the picture is wider. When I can afford a widescreen telly, I`ll be glad of the anamorphic thing.

I post this information on the offchance anybody`s interested. Thank you and goodnight!