Video Asylum

TVs, VCRs, DVD players, Home Theater systems and more.

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RE: 4:3 OLED TVs: A Win For All

Posted by bassbinotoko on July 7, 2020 at 13:08:47:
I don't see the necessity. Maybe there will be 4:3 OLED monitors for particular commercial applications. What's so bad about a 1080p or 4K 16:9 screen cropped to 4:3?

As for analog inputs? Going from digital to analog and back again will inevitably degrade the signal. Far better to use a DVD player or media player with HDMI output. There is no shortage of those on the used market; many newer ones only have HDMI out. I picked up a Sony DVP-NS75H at a pawn shop on impulse, and it is a wonderful tool for playing DVDs. The transport controls allow single-framing back and forth, better than any software or hardware digital player I've used, though not as user-friendly as jog/shuttle on a laserdisc or VCR. There's probably other worthy Sony players. My only real beef is it won't play region-free PAL DVDs. (I tried an Oppo DVD, but the UI resembled any other no-name DVD player, and the zoomed picture was ugly.)

Maybe using a media player like the Western Digital WD TV Live would solve some problems. My old TV was a widescreen CRT Sony, nice picture, but with significant overscan. Despite how good the Sony player was, I started ripping DVDs to mkv on a USB drive to play with the WDTV Live, since it can zoom out to compensate for overscan, or zoom in to fix letterboxed DVDs. (Ratios of 1/8x, 1/4x, 1/2x, 0.8x, 0.9x, 1.1x, 1.2x, 2x, 4x, 8x) I can't see any degradation or artifacts from playing videos with 10 or 20% zoom applied, even on a 1080p screen (apart from the obviously softer picture at higher ratios). Another benefit: if DVDs have been encoded at the wrong aspect ratio, an mkv file can be patched in mkvtoolnix and the "Live" will read the tag and stretch the picture appropriately. The "Live Plus" is an upgrade from the "Live" with support for Dolby Digital Plus (not sure what else, but it saves having to transcode DDP stuff to DD); the "Live Streaming" seems to be a whole new design with a prettier UI but worse functionality.