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I have no HDTV gear, and don't feel any need for it (since there's basically no HDTV content available that I care about). However, it would be nice, when watching letterboxed movies, to have them grow horizontally rather than shrinking vertically. In other words, it'd be nicer to have vertical black bars with TV than horizontal black bars with movies.
So basically, I'm trying to figure out whether this is worth the effort, and how much of a pain in the butt it will be (both up front, and on a day-to-day basis.)
(Really I'd rather have a 116" diagonal LCD instead of a projector, but they don't exist.)
- As far as I know, most movies are 1.85:1. But the whole home theatre and HDTV world seems to have standardized on 16:9 (AKA 1.77:1) which is a lot less wide. This means that letterboxed movies won't fill the whole screen, and even after upgrading your gear, you still have black bars at the top and bottom.
This is madness, is it not?
I guess I have three choices for how to project onto a 16:9 screen:
- Get a 16:9 projector (they exist, but are rare);
- Get a 4:3 projector, and an "anamorphic" adapter lens that stretches the 4:3 image to 16:9;
- Get a 4:3 projector, and project an image that is as wide as the screen (but 30% taller.)
Options 2 and 3 sound pretty kludgey, but option 1 severely limits the choice of projectors. What is the Done Thing?
Pretty much the only two video sources I use are DirecTivo (non-HDTV version), and Playstation 2 (for playing games and watching DVDs).
In a setup like that, how much of a pain in the butt is it to switch modes? Is this something that you do with the source signal, or with a setting on the projector, or both?
I see that my Tivo has a preference for TV aspect ratio that lets you choose "4:3" or "16:9", but when I change that, nothing seems to happen. I expected it to stretch the image or something, but I can't see any difference at all.
So can someone with experience with this stuff tell me how it actually works in practice?
Regarding Section B:
IIRC, #2 is exactly how 35mm film is projected in theaters. That's the idea behind anamorphic... A full frame is shot, and anamorphic lenses are used to provide the correct aspect ratio. The problem I see with this is that if you then want to watch 4:3 content, you'd either need to switch out lenses or have an input which would shrink the content automatically.
I personally think the idea solution is to go with #1 would be the best idea, as it would do precisely what you want, and without any sort of hacks. I remember 16:9 projectors being rather pricey, but if you can find a reasonable one, I'd go with that.
#2 is how Cinemascope film (2.35:1) is projected in cinemas; an anamorphic lens is used to stretch an Academy aperture frame (1.37:1) to full screen.
That said, there are many 35mm films which are not projected using anamorphics. The standard aspect ratio for European film is 1.66:1 (that for US films is 1.85:1), both of which use a reduced area of the 35mm frame.
Movies range between about 1.66:1 to 2.33:1 (ignoring the old 1.33:1 movies), depending on the process used. From what I remember of my DVD collection 1.85:1 and 2.33:1 are about equally represented.
I believe the 16:9 ratio (1.77:1) was chosen for widescreen TV because it was reasonably close to both 1.33:1 (4:3, ie "fullscreen"), and 1.85:1 (common widescreen movies) without leaving excessively large parts of the screen unused in either case. But you still get sigificant parts of the screen unused in the 2.33:1 situations; that's kind of a "no win" situation, as if the screen were 2.33:1 then 1.33:1 ("fullscreen") would like pretty horrible on it.
I'm not really sure what the right answer would be with a projector. I believe the movie theatres actually use anamorphic lenses (and other appropriate lenses), but that seems far too much like hard work for "home theatre". If I were doing it I suspect I'd get a 1.33:1 projector (since they're readily obtainable), and a screen something like 16:9, and set it up to project slightly larger (vertically) than the screen and live with the compromise. YMMV.
Ewen
... except when you're watching 4:3, you have to shrink it down in software, leaving you projecting black bars on the top, bottom, left and right sides. Uhhuh.
If your 4:3 viewing habits include more than a tiny minority, I'd just recommend getting a larger 4:3 screen and living with bars on the top and bottom during widescreen viewings.
Actually what I had in mind was letting the 4:3 bleed over the top/bottom of the screen a little (onto whatever is behind it), and living with that. Friends of mine with 16:9 TVs seem to mostly leave it set in a mode that makes 4:3 full width, and chops off the top/bottom, and it's still pretty watchable.
As I said, YMMV.
Ewen
PS: Assuming the projector or screen can be moved, "shrinking it down" can be achieved in hardware simply by moving the projector and screen closer to each other.
My HDTV (a Panasonic) has a "Just" mode which stretches the 4:3 image less in the middle and more on the outer edges, under the mostly correct assumption that the important stuff is happening on the center of the screen. I find this more watchable than chop mode (which makes the SD signal even more blurry.)
Movies range all over in size. The HDTV ratio of 16/9 (1.778) was chosen because it was about halfway between TV (4:3) and movies (often 2.35:1).
Another common aspect ratio, often used in comedies, is 1.85:1. They shoot in that because comedies are sold often in VHS/DVD, and it makes the pan & scan process (cropping the sides off and focusing on the "main" area) easier, without pissing people off who don't understand black bars.
So widescreen isn't too painful... half the movies fill your whole TV, and half only have minor black bars on top/bottom.
My friends and I all have 4:3 projectors. We looked into 16:9, but decided that full screen video games, computer, and to a lesser extent DirecTV were going to loose out on 16:9 gear. We had the advantage of playing with a 4:3 for a while (first person who bought one) and finding a very cool local home theater store that encourages you to test equipment and content on the equipment you are planning on purchasing in store. In the end, we agree that 4:3 is the right choice. Our screens are all 6'x8' and up - so the movies are huge anyway. GT4 at that size is quite amazing as well.
As for all content being 1.85:1 - you'll note that a lot of new movies (and theaters) are 16:9. This is because the HD movie standard is 16:9 - so most stuff shot digitally is now 16:9. For example, I know Sin City was 16:9, and I believe that Star Wars 1, 2, and 3 are as well.
…who expected this comment to start with "a failure to communicate".
Anyone?
Anyone else?
Okay, fine.
No.
"is a failure to communicate."
Maybe if he said: "What we've got here"
The line is "What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it... well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you men.", at least that's what IMDB says for Cool Hand Luke
Not "What we have here" ... unless you meant to be quoting Major Payne.
http://www.wave-report.com/tutorials/VC.htm I thought that directTV was sending stuff as mpeg4 but I could be wrong. That would imply that it's using some ratio based on the cif standard 704x576. But that's probably not relevant.
DirecTV sends MPEG-2 in the video stream, and either MPEG-1 or AC3 for the audio (depending on if you're on a channel with surround sound).
ah right that's the one.
DirecTV will be transitioning to MPEG-4 through 2007 as it brings its new satellites online so it can supply an HD package equivalent to the SD packages it offers today (1500 locals, 150+ nationals). If you were planning to buy an DirecTV HD tuner (TiVo or otherwise), right now wouldn't be a good time; you would be flushing your $$ down the toilet.
Eh, so no wonder I was confused as to mpeg versions. I do phone crap at work which is loosely related to those standards.
I don't really worry about it much as I don't figure my (non-HD)tv will break anytime in the next few years.
You have already mentioned that you think an anamorphic lens is a kludgey solution. I concur. You're going to end up with individual pixels having a wide aspect ratio. I'd want to see a demo of this technique before buying it. I suspect that movie theaters get away with it because 35mm has so much detail.
<wank>I'm thinking back to the brief time I spent working with video capture . . . an anamorphic signal looks no different to an analog display, as there's still the same amount of time between horizontal retraces. The rate at which the signal changes, though, is higher. Thus, an anamorphic signal would be resampled on-the-fly on a 4:3 set. </wank>
You're going to end up with individual pixels having a wide aspect ratio.
Well, that's already the case with just about ANY dvd out there, isn't it? IIRC the DVD standard doesn't use square pixels...
I'll presume you know all this, and I'm just explaining myself at this point. The projector has a fixed number of pixels across the screen, regardless of their shape. Sending more pixels across to the projector will not magically increase the number of pixels displayed, even if those pixels are then stretched horizontally by a lens. I suspect that pixels made unnaturally wider by the lens will not look right.
One of the Done Things is to use more than one normal 4:3 projector. Expensive, and you have to have the projectors aligned well.
Your option 3 has the side benefit of cropping off the annoying scrolling tickers often seen on news channels. That beats the duck tape method.
Anamorphic lenses ONLY stretch the image horizontally. So if you show a 4:3 movie through a 16:9 anamorphic lens, you'll see a bunch of wide stretched out people looking silly. If you watch a 16:9 movie on a 4:3 projector with such a lens, you'll see wide stretched out people with wide stretched out black bars at the top and bottom.
What you'd need to do is "squish" the image horizontally but not vertically in software. Then let the lens "unsquish" it. I dont believe 4:3 projectors do that automagic squishification do they?
You'd need a DVD player with an option to let you play anamorphic video without doing any processing at all when viewing, leaving that for the anamorphic lens to handle. Anamorphic DVD's are full-height in the encoding, the black bars are inserted at top and bottom on play-back.
I do not know whether such beasts exist.
They do exist. I'd be surprised if there were any that didn't do that. Bascially, you tell your DVD player in setup mode that you have a 16:9 TV despite the fact that you don't. My 4:3 TV automatically switches to its anamorphic mode, but if it didn't have such a mode (as most TVs don't), then you'd get skinny pictures.
I don't know what the Done Thing is, but I'd just get a 16:9 projector. There are even native 1080p projectors available now, though they're pricey (like this Fujitsu LPF-D711). And at least I'd rather have too many pixels for most of what I watch and have it scaled up than have too few for the really good stuff and have it scaled down.
The 'aspect ratio' switch in the TIVO should:
When set to 4:3 and the device is outputting full-frame 16:9 content (where the 'square' frame contains data that is squished horizontally): add black bars top and bottom & resize/resample downwards the full frame 16:9 content so the vertical resolution is lessened but the horizontal resolution is unchanged.
When set to 16:9 and outputting full-frame 16:9: output the full-frame as-is (i.e. if you view it on a dumb terminal you get thin people) and also encode the 'this is 16:9' signal in the video subcarrier or wherever this goes. A smart display unit will then change aspect ratios automatically.
What you want really is to avoid at all costs losing pixels. If you get good optics, #2 will give you the best quality as it avoids all resampling but you'll have to switch the lens out when viewing 4:3 content.
#3 is basically how most people use their widescreen TVs as they never seem to bother to set them back to 4:3 for 4:3 content, they just let the set chop off the top and bottom, which is really irritating.
#1 would be best if the projector has extended resolution in the horizontal, so when displaying 4:3 content it won't be crippled (i.e. make sure the projector has square pixels.)
Also, as has been said a lot of films are 2.35:1 (Cinemascope, Panavision, etc) so you'll still get black bars top and bottom for those that are. It's not quite so annoying there because the data was never recorded onto the DVD in the first place, so it's not like you're missing anything.
I would buy a standard 4:3 projector with optical zoom, if such a beast exists. That way when 16:9 content comes on, you zoom in the appropriate direction - this assumes your projection screen is 16:9 and you have the projector zoomed to display 4:3 content with bars either side.
Is there any reason I should believe it's doing anything at all, given that I've seen no change in the output with either my current projector, or a plain old TV?
I also seriously doubt that the Tivo has any notion of what the source aspect ratio of the shows it has recorded are (since it's not plausible that random stations will be sending that for non-HD content.)
I don't know whether your broadcaster is embedding the 16:9 signal and sending 16:9 content, as I have no knowledge of the USA market (UK here.)
I make a vague guess based on the way things are here: if you have digital cable or digital satellite then you should be able to make it work as the 16:9 signal will be generated by the cable/sat decoder based on the flags in the mpeg transport stream. Make sure your cable/sat decoder (if separate from your TIVO) has the '16:9 display' option enabled, or it will be letterboxing the signal for you, instead of passing it on as-is with the 16:9 signal turned on. If your cable/sat decoder is part of your TIVO and 16:9 is enabled there (as you say it is) then 16:9 content should come through on a non-enabled device as full-frame-squished-horizontally. If you're not seeing that then the 16:9 content is probably being transmitted with the bars as part of the input video signal (i.e. badly, but that's the way a lot of places seem to do it because their video engineers don't know shit about shit and/or it's cheaper to produce just-one-stream than to produce two streams, one for 16:9 enabled networks and one for non-enabled.)
In theory, DTV supports anamorphic content, which displays properly with that setting. Every DTV reciever I've had for the last 6 years has had that setting somewhere.
In practice, I think they used it a few times for a couple things on Bravo a year or so ago, but that's it. They have the capability to broadcast anamorphic, but they don't.
I am not sure about direcTivo, but I have the TiVo DVDrecorder/DVR combo, and the 16:9 functions only work when I am going to component out. Most (Read all) TV shows do not seem to follow this, wide screen or not. However, if I put a 16:9 enhanced DVD into it, It does switch over to anamorphic scaling, and I have to change my TV's display settings to deal with it.
You mention using the PS2 as your dvd player, I know for about $30 you can get compnent out for the PS2, what I do not know, is if the PS2 recognizes DVD's that are "widescreen enhanced".
FWIW: The last projector my dad had (some sony) would switch between 16:9 and Regular TV depending on it's input source. It dealt with this by creating black bars on the left and right for regular 4:3 viewing.
Hmm. Well, my DirecTivo (Philips 7000/17) has composite and S/Video outputs, but not component. So I'm going S/Video from DTV to my tuner (Denon AVR-2805) which then generates component out to go to the projector (it's a long run, and until recently, I thought you couldn't even go that far with S/Video).
I have both the S/Video and component cables for the PS2, but at the moment I'm using the S/Video cable, because it turns out that while my tuner can upsample S/Video inputs to component outputs, it won't downsample component outputs to composite, which means that my plain old backup tv doesn't get signal. (I use the backup TV for daytime viewing, because my projector is useless until the sun has gone down, even with the curtains closed).
I would then just buy a projector that you like and is nice and bright, and accept the black bars.
I recently made the mistake of starting to upgrade my tv stuff, and so far it seems to be a never ending money pit, and I am not that picky. I just seem to keep on having to buy "oh, one more thing"
slightly off topic, but why in the hell does Monster want to charge me $125 for a stupid DVI cable? I get them free with a $300 LCD monitor, does that mean the monitor is only $175? Even the discount brand cable was $80.
I was just getting ready to submit a big-old explanation of how the HD TiVos work, but I reread your post and you claim not to have one. I expect that you just have a new remote that has the Aspect button on it. Does pressing that button do anything at all, like pop up something that tells you 4:3 or 16:9 (or however it's labelled)? I bet that it's a NOOP on non-HD TiVos.
For the record, even on the HD TiVos, the button is unnecessary to irritating. It just sets an option on the TiVo about the shape of your TV, and should be hidden five levels deep in a configuration menu somewhere, not on the remote. (Unless they really think that people are swapping their TVs out constantly.) Basically, it changes if you get bars on the top and bottom during wide material or if you get bars on the sides during narrow material. It's been so long since I set it up that I can't quite remember where it does this, but I do seem to remember that it does absolutely nothing when displaying NTSC material.
There's no such button on the remote; I was talking about the option buried down in the preferences menu.
I forgot that it's the Window/PiP button on the HDTiVos that does that and it's not labelled as aspect ratio.
Now that I'm in front of my HDTiVo, let's see what that does. BTW, the remote button and the buried option are not tied together.
Hmm. Okay, I have a 4:3 TV, but it does HDTV and Anamorphic 16:9 mode. With the Aspect Ratio setting and the Panel/Full Aspect Correction button (the one I was talking about on the remote) interact like this:
So, since you only have 480i output and only have 4:3 recordings, the Aspect Ratio option should do nothing except when in 16:9 Aspect Ratio and the Aspect Correction is in Panel mode. Of course, I have no idea if you even have the Aspect Correction option, which is on my HDTiVo, as I said, the Window/PiP button on the remote and also the option immediately above the Aspect Ratio option in the menus.
I have no aspect correction option, only the 4:3 and 16:9 toggle in preferences.
Then I have no idea what the fuck that could possibly do. Since HDDirecTiVos would seem to have the ultimate set of options as far as aspect settings go, and yours has no combination of options and features that, on the HDDirecTiVo, would allow the TiVo to do anything different, I'm going to say that that's an orphaned option.
Actually, I forgot that I had a regular DirecTiVo sitting right in the other room. Hooked it up to my HDTV (which, again, knows about basically every US TV standard except 720p) and I can't get the Aspect Ratio option to do anything, either. Reading a couple of manuals online, it would appear that they expected some shows to be broadcast in anamorphic NTSC (like what a DVD player does), but I've never heard of any such thing before.
Oh, and by “Squished,” I mean that people appear thin and tall, and by “Stretched” and “Expanded” (oops -- didn't mean to use different terms for the same thing), I mean that people appear wide and squat.
Plasma screen? But they are expensive...
Do *not* buy a plasma screen. Ever. They have terrible burn-in problems. The black bars that you use for 4:3 will remain there when a movie is playing.
Furthermore, they typically can't actually produce a real black, so watching movies in the dark, they come out muddy. Also, they get really, *really* hot. This may be a concern for some people.
I'm suprised you'd get a burn-in from *black*. I suppose that the areas with the black bars would over time become brighter (relatively) than the rest of the screen. I also seem to recall reading that while they are big, thin, bright and have a very large viewing angle, they're very expensive and don't have spectacular colour reproduction (as well as running hot).
Still, if you want big and thin, plasma is about the only solution.
No, you get burn-in from the picture portion. You're right about the black bars becoming brighter, and that would become rather annoying for me.
A friend of mine has a plasma TV, and tells me that his display can be un-burnt by not watching the kind of stuff that burned it in (the GTA3 info display, in his case).
I have a new 2nd generation Plasma and it doesn't have any burn-in problems. I watch 95% 4:3 TV and the occasional DVD and there are no bar issues ever on the 16:9 DVDs.
The burn-in issue hasn't been around for a couple of years. Time to update your info before you spread the FUD around.
Show me any non-projector over 100" diagonal. They don't exist.
*mad googling*
Damn, you're right! They seem to max out at about 65". Shame.
It's not much over, but I saw this at CES
http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?section=platforms&id=1844
102" and incredibly overwhelming.
Not yet shipping (even discounting the insane price).
Also it looks to be 100" diagonal 16:9, which means it would be a downgrade from the 100" 4:3 that I have now (20% less area, probably ~2' less tall).
I've had my wide-screen TV for about a month. Most shows are broadcast as 4:3, and thats what my DirecTivo records. Some shows, such as West Wing, will appear in 4:3 with horizontal bars above and below. For those, I have to switch modes on my tv to Zoom or Letterbox. For DVDs, I must also manually choose which framing to use. In other words, it doesn't seem to be smart at all.
Ultimately, the thing that will take advantage will be HDTV. But as you and I know, and HD DirecTivo is not inexpensive. So for now I'll just enjoy the fact that on rare occasions I do get to see stuff as wide-screen.
Are you sure you have '16:9' output enabled in your DVD player? If you don't have that enabled then the DVD player will add letterboxing to 16:9 content, if you do then the TV should switch automatically and the DVD player will output anamorphic (squished) images.
A. This link will tell you the reason why there's different aspect ratios instead of the industry standardizing on one. It's really just film industry history. I think HDTV standardized on 16:9 instead of 1.85:1 because the latter would be too great of a departure from 4:3 for the typical TV buyer and probably delay HDTV adoption, or something.
B. Don't do option #2. Unless I'm misunderstanding you, having non-square pixels nowadays is batty. #1 would be what I'd pick, since you'll buy less resolution with #3. As a stopgap, buying a 4:3 display is okay, but I don't see why anyone would spend any significant money on one anymore.. 4:3 is going away. It may take 10 years, but it's gonna go.
C. Any good projector/HDTV will auto-sense the resolution changes like a PC monitor would, or at least provide a button on the remote for quick switches. However, you're not going to push HDTV or any aspect ratio other than 4:3 across a single Composite wire (think the single RCA-jack, like you get on the side of an NES) so that's why you probably don't see any change. You'll need Component (Y-Pb-PR) or DVI or HDMI to do that.
To do movies right, get a proper DVD player with DVI out to the projector. You can cheat by just getting a component adapter for the PS2 but the quality probably won't even be as good as a dedicated DVD player with component.
I know the weenie brigade says the PS2 isn't a good DVD player, but it looks fine to me. Also it means one less remote control I have to fuck around with. (I do have the component cable for it).
This is a great primer on 16:9, anamorphic dvd, et al.
http://gregl.net/videophile/anamorphic.htm
A:
For "enhanced for widescreen TV" DVDs, the DVD player takes care of it for you, and it is much less annoying than on a 4:3 TV, because the image can get even shorter. Plus, you get more resolution out of a 16:9 display because some of those image lines you'd otherwise see are compressed out of existence on a 4:3 display.
B:
3 sounds as good as 1. I wouldn't want to have to fiddle with lenses (and cleaning them) just because I was watching a DVD or widescreen game instead of Tivo. I think 3 may take experimenting to set up correctly between the DVD player and the projector so you don't lose resolution. You may have to tell the DVD player "no, no, this is a 16:9 display" and have the projector take care of the aspect ratio (if it can, do they do that?).
C:
FWIW, I have 4 modes on my TV (Toshiba), 4:3 mode, 4:3 stretched-to-16:9 mode, cut-off-the-letterbox mode (expands 4:3 with black bars at top and bottom to fill the screen) and 16:9 mode. There's a handy button for it on the remote. I would be astonished if a widescreen projector didn't have a similar handy button.
The PS2 has the same setting as your Tivo in the setup menu, but it only seems to matter for "enhanced for widescreen TV" DVDs. If you have a 16:9 DVD and a 4:3 display the PS2 (and every DVD player that has this adjustment) will letterbox the video signal (its not on the DVD). If you have a 16:9 display you get an unaltered signal.
Games don't seem to use that setting to figure out if they should be widescreen or not.
Since you have a non-HD Tivo, I can't figure out what the aspect ratio setting is for. I bet its something somebody forgot to disable from HD Tivo.
i'm assuming that you don't want the image to be compressed or stretched (visually)?
for option #2 you'd have to pre-process (visually squish) the 16x9 image to fit the 4x3, which the lens would then expand out again. that works fine but you need everything running though some processor
i can't tell what you're talking about with option #3
this is really a non problem if you think about it from outside of the technology box-
it's a projector, not a TV- there are no hard edges, and if you project on a large wall instead of a screen there are no "black bars"
you simply have as many pixels as you can use, vertically and horizontally- and if you're able to position the projector so that it's zoom isn't already maxed out, you can move the image around to even fit a screen
(as in- project 16x9 image on 4x3 projector, zoom so image fills 16x9 screen- black bars are off the screen)
this usually isn't done because keeping the zoom at halfway and moving the projector back generally decreases performance and obviously requires more physical room, which is why to me the best solution is just to project on a wall and let the chips fall where they may
Projecting onto a screen instead of a painted wall makes the picture at least twice as bright. The stuff they make screens out of is really reflective.
you want gain, you got gain:
http://www.projectorcentral.com/Goo_Systems-Screen_Paint.htm
Now that is tempting!
Looks pricey, though -- they don't make it clear what coverage is like or how many coats you need, but at 6 coats × 500mL that's $450 worth of paint. That's more than screens cost. But it could take half or twice as much paint, for all I know...
Also, my wall isn't nearly as smooth as my screen is...
yeah- i found the actual manufacturer's page after some digging-
http://www.goosystems.com/
it has all the info you could ever want-
When you say “letterboxed movies,” do you mean stuff on DVDs or do you mean any letterboxed material, like TV shows shot for HD and shown on NTSC letterboxed? Because anamorphic DVDs would help this a lot if that's largely what you're interested in, and, unless I'm mistaken, the Playstation 2 doesn't support anamorphic output. (Actually, now that I think about it, I may very well be mistaken. Please, someone confirm or deny.)
Been fighting with this since my friends and I went together in the pre-DVD days to buy a Proscan (aka RCA) 40" widescreen tube TV to watch our laserdiscs on. Then tried to hook the first round of DVD players into it later on...
Most studio movies today are either 1:1.85 or 1:2.35. When they put a 2:35 movie onto DVD, they usually leave the aspect ratio alone. For 1.85 movies, they usually crop it, at least in the "enhanced for widescreen" mode, aka anamorphic. It's very rare for them to not do the slight cropping. If there is no widescreen enhanced version, then it usually is the actual 1.85 ratio, and when you zoom the picture to fill horizontally you'll have some small black bars.
It could be that the 16:9 switch on your tivo just places the onscreen menus in different places? Some people watch 1.33:1 content zoomed on thier widescreen TV, which tends to cut off on-screen menus. Maybe it just moves it more towards the center so they are still on the screen. It's doubtful that it would care much beyond that about the aspect ratio.
For projectors, high end people (which I'm really not) generally buy a 4:3 projector and size it to taste on their screen, depending on the content they have. Of course, said people also typically have expensive video processors and scalars that can make the image pretty much do whatever they want at the touch of a button. Mere mortals like me tend to end up having to switch manual switches back and forth (why on earth the resolution/output/screen size switches never make it onto the remotes is beyond me).
I can say that now that more and more things are going HD, or at least 16:9, including consoles, computer games, TV, etc.. If you buy an expensive enough 4:3 projector so you have the resolution/quality to spare on losing a percentage of the screen and you care that much, that's fine. For those of us without that financial option available, we'll probably just pick a mid-to-low level 16:9 and be happy enough with it.
And watch all of you 4:3 TV in 16:9 mode where it stretches out everything!
Because then everybody will look at your screen and say "Wow. JWZ has a cool projector. Everything's widescreen!"
I've had a 16:9 widescreen TV for about five years now. It has both analog and digital tuners. With the digital tuner, most broadcast TV is received in 16:9 ratio on the main UK channels. Older replays are obviously broadcast in in 4:3. I buy DVDs in anamorphic widescreen wherever possible.
Basically the TV takes care of aspect ratios automatically, occasionally you'll see the picture adjust as the broadcast switches between 16:9 and 4:3 (e.g. at commercial breaks in an old film). If you fiddle with the remote's aspect-ratio controls then yes, you can make things squished or expanded but generally things work.
I have the TV set to zoom slightly on 4:3 stuff so that you lose a thin slice of the picture at the top and bottom but still have thinner black bars on each side. This compromise works best for me. Occasionally you get a widescreen film broadcast in letterboxed 4:3, this is really annoying since the TV shows a thick black border on all four sides. Using the zoom button just tends to emphasise the loss of resolution compared to a properly broadcast 16:9 film (UK Digital broadcast is not HDTV but is *much* sharper & than UK analogue PAL which is noticably better than NTSC so "normal" digital widescreen is hugely better than letterboxed PAL).
It's obvious, but I'd consider:
* the aspect ratio of the media you have already.
* how long you want to keep using this new equipment
* likely trends in film/TV/DVD media and equipment that you'll want to hook up to in that timeframe.
4:3 equipment has gone the way of compact audio tapes in my home. I still have them (e.g. VCR) but I can't remember the last time I used them.
These days, I'd think very long and hard before buying any AV gear that wasn't optimised for 16:9 HDTV (whilst still automatically handling old 4:3 signals the way I prefer). YMMV
I got it a couple of months ago, and am still fiddling with it.
The aspect ratio setting on my DVD player, (and your Tivo?) only works with the Component Video outputs. Composite is assumed 480i (Regular TV) format. S-video is assumed to be 4:3 ratio up to 800 pixels across (or was that 1024, anyway 1024 is too blurry anyway).
DVI is a little brighter than Component Video, but you will not be able to tell the difference unless you have a side-by-side comparison.
The projector/TV should auto-sense the input and project appropriately. My TV has a customizable default display format for 4:3 video input (I set it for gray bars on either side).
There should be a button that allows you to choose display format for 4:3 video:
Normal (Grey or black bars on sides)
Full (Stretched horizontally)
Wide Zoom (You loose only a little above and below, and the stretch is not too noticeable)
Zoom (You loose more above and below, but you keep the aspect ratio)
It does not matter if you go with 4:3 projector or 16:9. Just go for the cheapest per horizontal pixel.
I think you meant 2.35:1 instead of 1.77:1. 1.77:1 fills the whole screen as long as it's anamorphic whereas anamorphic 2.35:1 still has black bars on a widescreen TV.