Having given myself a widescreen projector for christmas, I've been running through many of my widescreen DVDs. But I've been disappointed because it seems that every DVD I own that says "widescreen, anamorphic, optimized for widscreen TVs, buzzword buzzword etc" are still actually just letterbox DVDs.
Are there any actual widescreen DVDs? Is there a particular wording on the box that you can use to tell if they're actually telling the truth about it being widescreen?
Or is my DVD player just dumb and downconverting the widescreen signals because it assumes it's only connected to a regular TV?
Just another thing to chock up to the list of reasons why I hate DVDs. Every single DVD I've ever watched, even fresh out of the shrinkwrap, have at least 3 spots where the video skips. Usually at chapter breaks. And the Die Hard DVDs kept getting the audio out of sync. I had to keep pausing it and restarting to sync it back up. And the new Star Wars (original) DVDs, in the second half of Empire, the blue color is shifted right as you go towards the right side of the screen, and there's a thin band on the left side of the screen that's devoid of the color red.
Sometimes you hit a really bad spot in a DVD fresh out of a sealed box, where it completely freezes and even crashes the DVD player. What's up with that? Is my Samsung running Windows 98 inside or something? The dvd software should be robust enough to realize when it's getting bit errors in a keyframe and keep reading past it until it can sync back up. I usually try those in several DVD players. Some DVD players you can fast forward far enough (sometimes it takes like 10 minutes of video) to get past. Others it freezes or crashes.
I say fresh out of sealed box to indicate that these problems aren't caused by scratches. The discs are clean.
I think about 3 times in my life I've managed to have a VHS crash my VCR (the tape was bent in a spot and got jammed in the heads). But with DVDs, it's every single DVD that has some problem. If not a skip, then audio sync or color bleeding issues. Whats up with that? Is everyone just using cheap offshore DVD transfer factories or something?
It's like network TV nowadays. It's all being run digitally, even if they convert it to analog to reach your TV. Every single time I watch a "DVD on TV", or any movie, at least twice somewhere during the movie you can see the encoding break down and the frames freeze and get huge pixilations. Even some regular TV shows will drop out with clear digital defects.
It's just kind of annoying however everyone embraces high-tech because it has to be the next great thing. But just because it's high and tech doesn't mean it's always great. But usually it could be if it was just well designed, tested, and made more robust.
Are there any actual widescreen DVDs? Is there a particular wording on the box that you can use to tell if they're actually telling the truth about it being widescreen?
Or is my DVD player just dumb and downconverting the widescreen signals because it assumes it's only connected to a regular TV?
Just another thing to chock up to the list of reasons why I hate DVDs. Every single DVD I've ever watched, even fresh out of the shrinkwrap, have at least 3 spots where the video skips. Usually at chapter breaks. And the Die Hard DVDs kept getting the audio out of sync. I had to keep pausing it and restarting to sync it back up. And the new Star Wars (original) DVDs, in the second half of Empire, the blue color is shifted right as you go towards the right side of the screen, and there's a thin band on the left side of the screen that's devoid of the color red.
Sometimes you hit a really bad spot in a DVD fresh out of a sealed box, where it completely freezes and even crashes the DVD player. What's up with that? Is my Samsung running Windows 98 inside or something? The dvd software should be robust enough to realize when it's getting bit errors in a keyframe and keep reading past it until it can sync back up. I usually try those in several DVD players. Some DVD players you can fast forward far enough (sometimes it takes like 10 minutes of video) to get past. Others it freezes or crashes.
I say fresh out of sealed box to indicate that these problems aren't caused by scratches. The discs are clean.
I think about 3 times in my life I've managed to have a VHS crash my VCR (the tape was bent in a spot and got jammed in the heads). But with DVDs, it's every single DVD that has some problem. If not a skip, then audio sync or color bleeding issues. Whats up with that? Is everyone just using cheap offshore DVD transfer factories or something?
It's like network TV nowadays. It's all being run digitally, even if they convert it to analog to reach your TV. Every single time I watch a "DVD on TV", or any movie, at least twice somewhere during the movie you can see the encoding break down and the frames freeze and get huge pixilations. Even some regular TV shows will drop out with clear digital defects.
It's just kind of annoying however everyone embraces high-tech because it has to be the next great thing. But just because it's high and tech doesn't mean it's always great. But usually it could be if it was just well designed, tested, and made more robust.