[MacDV] Re: DVD player/TV crops my DVD-R

[Steven Rogers]

On Tuesday, April 1, 2003, at 10:04 PM, Jim Asherman wrote:

> On Tuesday, April 1, 2003, at 10:40  PM, Steven Rogers wrote:
>
>> On Tuesday, April 1, 2003, at 08:08 PM, Erica Sadun wrote:
>>
>>> Rectangular pixels are wider, not taller.
>>
>> Rectangular pixels on the TV are taller than they are wide - you can 
>> see that on some Sony TVs.  That's why an image that's ready for the 
>> TV looks wider on the computer - the TV "squishes" it up.
>
> Uh I thought.. that the image looks wider on the computer because of 
> displaying the rectangular pixel perspective in a square pixel 
> environment.

Right - so long as you remember that there really isn't necessarily a 
"rectangular pixel" - it just means that the TV doesn't have the same 
number of dots per inch horizontally as it does vertically, while the 
computer monitor has 72 DPI both ways.

> Obviously the TV does not "squish" it's own native signal. It simply 
> displays the rectangular pixels correctly . It is the computer that 
> makes it look funny and has to convert the picture to square pixels in 
> order to display it properly,

Well, its a matter of perspective whether the TV squished or the 
computer is stretched. The information in the picture is the same - the 
dots are just closer together horizontally on the TV. I tend to think 
of the TV as a "squished" picture because years of working the computer 
environment makes it seem like only a loony lunkhead would make a 
display standard that has different horiz and vert resolutions . . . 
I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time  . . .

SR