My dad told me a story that he hated when cinemascope movies came to his local theater because all the people would be stretched vertically. I told him the reason for that was the theater didn't have the anamorphic lens to unsqueeze the image.
Oh wow, that's a trip! But yeah, I can totally see some theaters just projecting the anamorphic prints as-is! I've been to a few preview screenings where they've started showing the film that way, but they'd always fix it within a few minutes.
i recall seeing movies on TV, and they'd "Pan & Scan" the movie, but during the credits on an anamorphic movie, they have the whole original image, but scrunched to get all the credits on screen -- as a kid, I thought this was the way it was supposed to be (I didn't no that during the movie, I was missing the sides of the original image).
I remember a conversation a buddy of mine and I were having back in the days before HDTV about the new aspect ratio issues we were going to see once 1.85-1 aspect ratio would become standard. Now here the situation is today and an whole generation after us has little to no understanding of these issues, that is before this fine and very informative video that explains it. Thanks, Culturedog and here is hopes that this video helps the younger generations essentially 'get the picture.'
Thanks! I'm already catching some flak for the running time haha, but I decided against splitting it up into 7 smaller videos. Thanks for checking it out!
It's still a pet peeve when I switch to an HD channel showing an older TV show and they've stretched the image to fit a 16:9 frame, completely distorting the image.
Older episodes of The Simpson's and Family Guy have not been shown correctly on certain channels like FXX or TBS. It pisses me off. It especially pisses me off when old sports clips in a 30 for 30 are cropped to widescreen. There is no point in zooming in on standard definition videotape source.
Did you see how Snyder released his Justice League cut in 4:3 on 4KUHD? To think that back on the 30s and 40s that was the standard ratio known as "academy ratio".
@@silvervalleystudios2486 The Academy Ratio (standardized in 1932) was 1.375:1 which is slightly wider than 4:3 (1.33:1). 4:3 was used during the silent era since it was the native aspect ratio of 35mm (without a soundtrack) and later saw reuse as the aspect ratio for television.
@@1987VCRProductions Good thing they changed it. It's OK for Citizen Kane and The Postman Always Rings Twice. But I can't imagine epics like Ben Hur or Khartoum shot on 1.37:1. Hitchcock never shot on Cinemascope, shame because I think Vertigo would have looked awesome on it.
You might find that there will be viewers who don't notice it. I've found many who happily watch movies that are stretched horizontally by a factor of ~1.5
For all of my friends that claimed they were missing something by watching a letterboxed movie, I brought out my Japanese Special Collection release of "Return of the Jedi," which had a demonstration of the difference between the pan-and-scan version and the letterboxed one. I never heard that same complaint after that; they realized that yes, they were losing size, but they were actually gaining picture area. "Jedi" was especially egregious with pan-and-scan; the scene with Luke and Han on the way to the Sarlacc will make you seasick.
Early DVDs can have this too as I was reminded when I played my original Scream DVDs on my HDTV on my PlayStation 4 recently. Had a tiny little windowbox going on.
Yup, I've got a small stack of early DVDs that weren't anamorphically enhanced. I still remember getting the Conan "Complete Quest" DVD set in the mid-2000s and being surprised that the 2nd film was windowbox city.
@@freddykruger1118 From LaserDisc masters, not from LaserDiscs. LaserDisc masters from that time period were usually on D-1 tape which was uncompressed 720 × 486 YCbCr digital video with 4:2:2 chroma subsampling. That exceeds the specifications of DVD video (MPEG-2 compressed 720 × 480 YCbCr digital video with 4:2:0 chroma subsampling), so it was perfectly suitable for use as a DVD master as well as a LaserDisc master.
@@Culturedog really good my friend, be intersting to see what people do with open matte, seen some zoom them into wide-screen and lose top/bottom, thoughts?
@@Laserdreamz Good topic. I have a few open matte LD's like The Return of the Living Dead that loses info when zoomed in but of course that's info that wasn't theatrically shown.
About 15 years ago a coworker was arguing with me that full screen movies are the original format and widescreen movies are made by just chopping off the top and bottom sections of the full movie frame, He argued that if the widescreen are the original format then why they don't call them full, Trust me I tried to reason with him with all the evidence you can imagine to no avail.
I remember a class-action lawsuit that went nowhere over properly matted Blu-Rays of flat films. It never fails to cause some confusion or stir up arguments. I've definitely had to walk away from some discussions that were going around in circles!
Great segment! I remember back in the day, watching Ghostbusters on our tube TV. Having seen it theatrically several times, I could tell how much of the image they were cropping out, and it irritated the crap out of me; I became a convert to original aspect ratio around that time. My current UHDTV has just one Zoom setting - I swear it trims a little bit off my 1:85 LDs but otherwise the picture looks really good (Windowboxing I admit pushes my limits, it feels like Peep-Hole-Vision).
When you talk about people not wanting to mess with the tv settings I’m reminded of the movie idiocracy where people become so dumb an average Joe is a genius.
A dead giveaway for a movie filmed in anamorphic is anytime you see a lens flare it will be oval shaped (as opposed to circular) from the stretching process.
Was just watching MUSE Back to the Future the other night. Such an interesting format. I never did get into D-VHS collecting, but I remember Widescreen Review magazine covering it extensively at the time. True Lies is still a popular one among the active collectors I know.
Wonderful video to explain the confusion of aspect ratio and screen adjustments. I remember the frustration back in the day when I worked @ a Good Guys! store and arguing with people about what widescreen was about on 4:3 TVs'. It was a losing battle and I eventually just came to accept that people want what people want.
Thanks! Oh man, I can only imagine what I was like being on the front lines like that! It was definitely an uphill battle at times as an enthusiast, but trying to explain widescreen to the consumers at large must have been quite the trial!
Culturedog The other worst thing back then was also trying to explain the differences between 8mm and VHS-C. I remember one person in particular would not accept my explanation that there was no such thing as an “8mm to VHS adapter” to play 8mm in a full size VHS deck. I ended that conversation by offering him $1000 if he could prove it to me; never saw the guy again 🙄.
I know people that back when they started Letterboxing movies on tv, tape, and LD felt they were being ripped off because their whole 4:3 screen wasn't being filled with an image.
Oh yeah, same. Part of the job of being an LD collector back in the day was constantly having to deliver impromptu seminars to random friends and family on the benefits of letterboxing. It was always an adventure!
I built a screent size of roughly 65" tall by 14-6 wide which was 2.35;1 by my calcs back in about 2007 and at the time I found a Vertical Compression Lens for the special deal price of $700. It's prisms were of acrylic. A few years ago I lucked out and found the exact lens but with GLASS prism and what a difference! Panamorph U85 is the model. So about three projectors later an Optoma UHZ65 does the honors and most 16 by 9 content fills the entirety. There's an aspect button on the remote I use when wiewinh anything letterbox to get rid of the top bottom black bars. I still have my pioneer CLD 501 or something laserdisc that plays both sides without flipping. Back in the day I used Sony crt projector and a dvdo line doubler for a short time. Wasn't great but was a start. Would be nice to enjoy laserdisc with the UHZ65 but I think you see the lines . Maybe you could suggest the best RGBHV to HDMI converter so I could add the ole laserdiscs into the mix?
Pardon the late response. The best-case processor for connecting LD to a projection setup is the Lumagen Radiance 2144, but it's still pretty expensive. The current favorite lower-cost solution is to use a Kramer VP-773. I run composite into my Kramer and then that unit pumps out HDMI. I currently have an older DVDO processor in the chain as well, so I can go 480p out from the Kramer and let other devices handle the scaling. There's also a certain range of Onkyo AVRs that have a great comb filter and scaling features. I know the TX-NR609, TX-NR709, and TX-NR809 are some of the models with the ADV7844 comb filter chip. A lot of enthusiasts look for units with blown audio boards and get them cheap, since they only need the video processing pathways. It's a bit of a rabbit hole for sure!
My dad lived in a semi small town with a couple of theaters. He told me he hated cinemascope movie because everything was stretched tall. Apparently, the theater never got the lens to unsqueeze the image.
That's wild! I've been to a few screenings where they've forgotten to use the right lens, but thankfully I would only have to tolerate a minute or two of super squished imagery before they would figure it out. It would definitely drive me crazy having to watch the entire runtime like that!
I still have my 68cm Sony Wega packed away. Waiting for the day I score a good LD player. Going to plug it in with some Component cables and connect to an amp with an optical cable. Bring back the 90s
I've been very curious when it comes to the LD format. This video was a great way to fill in some of my blanks. Might buy a player next time one shows up. Although the format was not exactly huge here in Norway there are still some in circulation. Keep up the good work - I'll keep watching, both old and new videos on you channel. Thanks!
Thanks! I know a few LD collectors in Norway. There actually was a small LaserDisc convention in Oslo for a few years running. Thanks for the feedback! Cheers!
I remember when plasma TV's came out with their widescreen box at like $20,000 a piece. I also remember my first widescreen 38" RCA HDTV Ready TV from 2003. It's amazing how many formats I've gone through in my lifetime and the various tools I bought to enjoy them. Currently I have a LG 55" UHD TV and I'm loving all the various aspect ratios I can select. I prefer just watching LaserDisc in the 4:3 style, since I loose so much quality during a zoom. If there was a TV that preserved the picture quality during the zoom then I'd totally be interested in that. At any rate, thanks for a wonderful video. Take care, Sam.
Thanks for checking it out! Oh yeah, those early plasmas were pricy beasts! I remember wanting a Pioneer Kuro when those dropped later, but never did go for it. Enjoy that LG! Cheers!
Just brought my Panasonic 60' plasma out of retirement for a retro LD/VHS/DVD/Blue Ray setup. Found a rare Panasonic LD player w/ RF out on eBay. Had a couple of flagship Yamaha receivers laying around too, with AC-3 demodulators built-in! After 35 years, I'm finally watching my LD collection with Dolby Digital (for the few discs that have it). Great video BTW!
My first widescreen tv was Thomson 32" CRT. It had multiple aspect ratio and zoom modes. I usually zoomed letterboxed "windowbox" programs to minimize black bars but kept correct aspect ratio.
I always wanted a widescreen CRT set in the 90s, but there weren't many models on the market and my local stores didn't carry them usually. I wish more TVs had a simple proportional zoom option that was clearly labeled. Though my Sony displays were always pretty user friendly with zoom options, thankfully.
I bought one of those RCA to HDMI converter boxes a few years back, and it just stretched the whole image to 16x9 and did nothing to improve the image. I sent it back. I have a Roku Insignia HDTV, and it has a few options for this. There's "zoom" as well as "auto," "direct," and "normal." "Auto" sometimes gets confused and stretches the 4x3 image at times, but I don't tend to use it. "Direct" is just the raw video dimensions as it is with no adjustments (oddly, with VHS "auto" and "direct" have a slight variation in the width of the image, but not the height). However, "normal" zooms the image in very slightly in case you've got a VHS tape with some of that noisy overscan. It'll zoom in a bit to hide those edges for a cleaner image. Thankfully, it doesn't have that silly panoramic mode at all, just the "stretch" option, which I almost never have a use for.
Had laserdiscs for a long time. The TV's and projectors had a zoom mode to get the right aspect ratio and not squeezed vertically. That was not needed once I moved onto anamorphic DVD's. I still remember some DVD's still needed the zoom mode such as 2001 and The Abyss (which I still have).
Yeah, I had a decent amount of non-anamorphic DVDs from the early years of the format. At the time I still had a 4:3 projection TV, so I wasn't too worried about it. Of course later on I wished they'd been enhanced for 16:9 once I got my first projector.
Brilliant Sam, a very well addressed video on a controversial and complex subject. I do think with laserdiscs having an image processor like a DVDO or similar helps a lot with getting the correct aspect ratio. Cheers, Alan.
bravo. i just finished this video. i loved it. i used to care much more than i do these days about getting it right. it's as if i have gotten lazy in my old age.
Culturedog Can you do a basics videos on getting the best picture quality watching these LaserDiscs? Cables, what to look out for/Avoid , S-Video Compo. Entry upscalers to highend. R7G is a good for NTSC? DoGg you killing it. Thanks again
Can do! I've been working on putting together a bunch of shorter basics videos, so this sort of thing will fit in perfectly. I am going to do a video on the R7G too, since I finally got one myself not too long ago. So far, it's a great performer!
The other thing I’m sure people do is for 2.35:1 Blu-Rays they may get distorted because people use the zoom feature to get rid of the black bars present on the Blu-Ray. It can be especially bad on something like a 4K tv where you need the image preserved as best as possible. My friends 4K doesn’t know how to not stretch a composite video image. It has a native input, is made by Visio, and yet you can’t actually turn off the stretch of 4:3 content
i really HATE when TV and other networks they CUT OFF the bottom and top of analog tape 4:3 content in order to fill a 16:9 screen, it happened infamously with the simpsons in FOX and disney+, and lots of old analog content which became a blurry cut off image forever, even worse, not bothering to properly digitize analog tape to 60 or 50 FPS as the original was , and people are stuck with just choppy 30 frames per secord forever.
I remember as a teenager in the mnid 2010s my dad had a 2008 RCA HDTV, I think it's 27'' and he would always put in cinema mode, which zooms the picture in. It would drive me crazy cause it would cut off an entire part of the picture in all directions, people looked half decapitated. I'ts funny, my grandmother bought it new, she got a discount on it cause the built in DVD player didn't work, but nearly 20 years later the TV part works like new.
I remember one of the first times I truly noticed aspect ratio was watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as a little kid and asking my mom why everyone in the opening credits was so tall and skinny.
Ironically, with the recent resurgence of IMAX aspect ratio in a lot of modern commercial films like Oppenheimer, Justice League (which re-approaches a 4:3 ratio), we might see 4:3 ratio large flat screens (4K, etc.) - probably not.
Yeah, it is funny how I finally got myself a Constant Image Height screen setup right around the same time everyone wants to celebrate 4:3 or similar ratios. At least I'm happy. haha
heads up, most of the new Samsungs with composite inputs (40 inches and smaller I believe not too sure) usually have scaling of ratios built in! my Samsung at my grandmas can scale by percentages
Yeah, my bedroom Samsung scales incrementally as well. It's kind of a pain at first to set it up right, but once it's done I can bounce back and forth between 16:9, 4:3 and Custom easily. I like that if I need to, I can use it to fine tune less wide ratios such as 1.66:1 - like the old Bond films. Very cool.
automatic mode should work gallantly as it is reminiscent of when you could watch the same TV channel both digitally and analogously. which had the effect that even if you watched the channel analogously, it was black up and black down on the tv screen. and most TVs fixed this
The main issue with VHS is it’s so low resolution that without pan and scan you miss so very very much detail and they got pretty darn good at doing it with minimal objectionable side effects. Some movies just can’t be panned and scanned like Lawrence of Arabia though.
Should look great - I was using one for a few years at the office for LD lunch breaks and it had an awesome picture. Their only drawback is that some of them have picture geometry issues, but the one I had was fine.
Everyone thinks I'm nuts when I point out a 2.35 movie has been cropped by a cable channel to fit a widescreen TV. I can usually tell just because the shot composition doesn't look right but I've never met anyone who also notices it.
Are the black bars really lacking detail? Or does it move the beam to fill only the space available? I know games can control the beam to get 240p60, so I'm wondering if LaserDisc could take all 450 lines and put them in the middle of your screen.
Yeah, LD unfortunately wasn't able to take advantage of that kind of image adjustment, so the black bars are actual unused resolution. The best option we had was with anamorphically-enhanced "squeeze" discs, but those were rare and only commercially sold in Japan (and somewhat in Europe) late in the format. I did have a US promo copy of Unforgiven that was anamorphically enhanced, but I'd like to get more of those discs.
I was over at Cinemark about a year ago and went into a screening of a scope movie they have all flat screens over there and the movie started and there was black bars on the screen so I got up to tell them that they forgot to turn on the masking and they told me they don't use it anymore it's a new company policy to leave all their movies on mask because people were used to seeing black bars on their screen at home
Oddly enough, Back in early 90's before DVD my sister had a CTR TV that her husband imported from France that has an option to squeeze the picture vertically only leaving black bars on top and bottom, Never understood what that was for until I heard about anamorphic contents 30 years later and that was an aha moment for me. The brand was Thomson.
That's wild! It's cool how many TVs were integrating cutting edge features in the early to mid-90s, even if they remained fairly obscure here in North America.
It would be good to have a list of TVs which allow 1% step zooming and panning in both directions. Not only for Laserdisks. I suppose someone might already have compiled one... When I bought my 16:9 (3D) TV (in or before 2016) I went to the store and tested the zoom option of the ones available and found one from LG. Then I watch 21:9 movies with 11% zoom with the picture moved to the top of the screen and a small black bar at the bottom which sometimes is useful for status displays. The small cut off area left and right is not needed most of the time. Usually only for BD/DVD menues, credits and monument valley views I switch back to unzoomed mode. Without zoom I deem the image too small at my watching distance for 21:9 or 2.33:1. Note: in PC mode most options are not available on most TVs. So if you use PC or Mac to stream switch to another TV mode and then switch off most imange enhancements as they delay the output. You can't reliablely control the mouse otherwise (or play a game). Often Game Mode is a good option without lag.
Telefunken! Nice! I recorded an album at the Telefunken microphone facility over here in the states. We did get finally 16:9 modes on some of the fancier Sony TVs etc., but it took a while.
Same. Only had a Luxor or Panasonic back in the tube days. They also changed the reformat mode if the DVD player was set to anamorphic output. Only worked when connected via SCART though. So probably using the old auto switcher signal somehow. A specific voltage maybe. Still have the backbreaker Panasonic. One day I'll carry that thing up the stairs and use for old vidogames. One day... :0
Yeah, a lot of TV shows around that time were shot 3-perf Super 35, so the negative is 16:9. But yeah, it has lots of side imagery that wasn't part of the composition, so you'd still have to carefully pay attention while making HD transfers. Otherwise you get all sorts of goofy errors like crew members and set edges in the image.
That's the issue Star Trek: TNG has. Filmed in widescreen (on 35mm I believe) but not actually framed so it could be released that way. Though in the era of the "magic eraser", perhaps we're closer to a widescreen release of TNG than you might think
Just stumbled on your channel, I still have LDs (have about 300 discs) but dont play them much now, I got into the format during the CD-V reboot in the 80' but never got a machine until the late 80's it was a Marantz CV-55 (at that time I lived in the land of PAL) now live in Canada. Took my collection and machines with me (running my 220v gear on step downs) But I would bring in LD from "Ken Cranes' and 01-laser and video, got some in from japan. Had a CLD-1450 for some time as it could also output NTSC then my last player that I still use today my DVL-919e, my question is you talk that you can improve the picture, do you have a video on that I cant find one. Want to see how if possible I can clean up the signal I see lots of drop outs / noise now on some discs, a few with root. Im using the S-VHS output on my 919e curious on your video chain for improved output. Just watched your DTS video and amazingly I dont have any DTS LD's 😂 I have two AC-3 DD LDs that sound amazing.
Great video! I don't like the title. I actively avoided clicking. Also, I'm not the target audience. I have a Retrotink 4K and don't have LaserDisc :p.
I always used to get mad when I saw bold letter notes saying "THIS FILM HAS BEEN FORMATTED TO FIT YOUR TV".... How the hell do you know what kind of TV I have?!? 😂 Oh the screen insanity indeed 😎
@@Culturedog haha that's certainly true these days! P.s. got your latest Star Wars laser disc boxed set video queued up for tonight! Just received the last printed Dolby digital set yesterday on eBay 👍
@@Culturedog Will do! I had a Sony MDP-333 like you back in the 90's (no demodulator setup though), but after almost 30 years, I'm finally going to hear an AC-3 Star Wars soundtrack at home with my newly assembled vintage setup!
Very informative vid! I've seen the stretch many times, especially with dvds and some cable. I had no idea what it was, just figured it was the way it was for some movies. Some movies for whatever reason, I prefer letterbox. Others, I can't stand it. I also learn to somehow enjoy movies only after watching it on TV, edited versions after watching the theatrical versions. I also prefer unrated director cuts. I'm a character to say the least. 😅
That's some viable information right there. I started to bring LD content to my YT channel 2 days ago and wondered about the stretched content on 16:9. Thank you very much for helping me not to get arrested by ARPD!
I have a Roku express plus that outputs through composite that I use on a 32 inch Sony Trinitron. It works well and looks pretty good. And I just started season 1 of the X Files on Hulu only to find that they letterboxed the image even through the composite out. For a show that was originally 4:3. Can't win these days.
Yeah, they claim they shot the first few seasons with enough wiggle room for eventual 16:9 cropping, but it would have been nice to have the original 4:3 versions. I noticed they still had to pan and scan a lot of the establishing shots, and they look pretty nasty on the HD versions.
I can't help but to think that this video was way longer than necessary and it could've been shorted a lot by actually showing some visual examples instead of trying to explain everything and making things overly complicated that way.
35:08 My Apocalypse Now LD is like that, confused me. The 2:1 ratio added to my confusion, LDDB says they also pan&scanned it a tad. Also says it's the first (unofficial) THX LD.
For audio, that would be a cool find, as I believe that has an AC-3 RF input for LaserDisc players, and the DVL-90 has an RF out. For video, it will definitely convert incoming composite video to its component outputs, though its comb filter may or may not be better than the one built-in to your LG TV. You could always compare running the LD player through the receiver vs. going direct to the TV and see which performs better. I also don't believe the receiver offers any aspect ratio controls, so you'd still need to operate those on the TV.
Thought this was going to go into the physics relationship between the signal encoded on the LD and the actual drive of the electron gun and some of the amazing modulation/dithering tricks that were done with mastering that signal for the physics of CRT guns. Even with a decent upscaler like the one in my Onkyo amp, when you go into the digital domain youre destroying that relationship.
Back in the late 1980s when rear-projection TVs were the top-of-the-line item, they did manufacture some widescreen rear-projection TVs (not sure if they were an exact 16:9 aspect ratio, I would assume close to it). There are some old demo videos uploaded on YT that feature these TVs (such as the Pioneer Optics '88 LD rip). I assume the scaling for these older TVs were much easier to tweak for special letterbox LDs compared to our modern "smart" TVs.
I wish I had been able to pick up one of the early widescreen RPTVs - by the time I bought my first projection set, they had pretty much given up on marketing 16:9 models in my area (until HD rolled in). I should look for some user manual scans to see how easy the zoom modes were to utilize. I should also grab a copy of that Laser Optics disc. I have the '89 version like everyone else, but the '88 one is great too! Thanks for watching the video! Glad you enjoyed it!
reminds me of the Star Wars Bonus Disc. 4:3 Letterbox released in 2006 when HDTV and Widescreen TV existed. Have to use your remote to get it to fit the screen. Or you have a small postage stamp in the middle with black borders on all sides. Worse they bothered to do a modern transfer on the Stars rolling to infinity of the non A New Hope version and just edited it onto the inferior laserdisc master. And the 77 roll up but with the wrong 1993 audio mix. Wrong color timing.Crushed blacks and dnr. I would still watch this over the 2020 Special Edition.
As someone who wants to dive into the world of LaserDisc, would it be better for me to just to view them on a CRT instead of trying to watch them on my HD TV anyway since composite signals tend to look pretty bad on a new TV anyway compared to a CRT? I could be wrong, but I thought I'd ask, lol
Some TVs handle LD better than others, but really, calibration is the key. CRTs are generally plug and play (though I've certainly seem some people watching LDs on tube sets with jacked up brightness levels), but newer TVs designed for HD plug and play will usually make LD look like a washed out mess with default settings. The key is to find and disable all of the wonky picture enhancement settings that are usually set to 'on' and try to hopefully find an equivalent to the old school brightness/contrast/tint/color/sharpness options suite in the menu. Backlight and other options can complicate things as well, but if you can snag a copy of Video Essentials on LD, you can use the test patterns to dial the brightness and contrast in, so LD will have that "pop" again. The other thing is to remember to give some viewing distance. Watching UHDs on new TVs will allow you to keep creeping closer and closer to the set without losing clarity, but standard def fare needs more space. Even so, when I'm sitting back and watching LD on my 4K set in 4:3 mode, the overall screen dimensions rival those of a huge CRT direct view set. And the black levels are awesome. With the lights off, I can't even tell that I'm not watching on an old tube set.
For sure! I make sure everything's well anchored as well. Though I have since moved and all of my LDs are stored on the bottom level. I did a recent reorganization project too, and I really felt it after spending a weekend lugging all those stacks of discs around!
This makes me miss my old plasma hdtv more because it *usually* knew to make things over component, composite, or coaxial in 4 by 3 without me having to change anything while also doing amazing 1080p because of those wonderful colors and sharpness plasma had. R.i.P. plasma tvs
Is window boxing an LD image on an HD TV the only way to actually see the intended resolution of a widescreen/letterbox LD? I did notice the best images from LD come when I use 16:9 on a widescreen OLED TV. If I try and zoom the image I get a lot of distortion. Also using a cheap amazon HDMI converter probably isn't helping anything.
HDTVs have to scale up material to match their native display resolution, so even windowboxed, LDs are being scaled to an extent. Some zoom options are decent. I use a DVDO Edge Green that zooms well, and some of the options built into displays do a solid job. It can definitely enhance some negative image artifacts (especially discs with a lot of aliasing), but I don't really notice any major resolution losses. Smaller windowboxed images can appear a tad sharper though. Some people have major complaints about zooming though. But I'm not sure if they have worse video processing or better eyesight. Or both. I'll start to notice more image issues if I go crazy and overzoom to fill my scope projection screen, but that's just silliness to blow up LDs that big. It is fun to do occasionally, though!
Step 1: Find the gun barrel circle on any James Bond film and put your coffee mug up to it. Step 2: Hit random buttons until the picture fills as much of the screen as possible. Step 3: Redeem yourself on LDForever with a screen photo. Step 4: Enjoy the film!
My smart tv has aspect ratio settings: Normal - it is preset to fit the aspect ratio. It automatically does 4:3 for my laserdisc Panoramic - so it looks distorted Wide - it stretches the image Zoom - I cannot adjust the zoom so I assume it is a smart zoom.
