Dragon Ball Z Kai blu ray black bars

[JEFFMAN219]

Oh I see thanks for explaining that to me. Damn I knew there was a reason why the blu ray of this set was cheaper then the DVD version

Now I'm confused. What does that have to do with anything? What perceived disadvantage are you implying the Blu-Ray version has?

I'm talking about the black bars on the screen. The DVD version for kai does not have any black bars.

[Gaffer Tape]

But if you were watching it with your TV set properly, the DVD version would have the black bars too. It's supposed to look like that. You're just watching the DVD with your TV zoomed in so that it's cutting off parts of the picture to fit your screen. On your Blu-ray, you're automatically seeing the whole image as it's intended to be.

[JEFFMAN219]

But if you were watching it with your TV set properly, the DVD version would have the black bars too. It's supposed to look like that. You're just watching the DVD with your TV zoomed in so that it's cutting off parts of the picture to fit your screen.

Naw it shows the whole picture fullscreen nothing is cut off I'll post a pic and show you what I mean

[Gaffer Tape]

No, I know what you mean, but you're misunderstanding. Dragon Ball Kai is presented on home video as a show with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Your television has an aspect ratio of 16:9, which means your screen is a different shape than the show. To be more specific, your screen is wider than the show. That's why the black bars are there: they're the space that's left over after the entire image is placed on your screen. If the image is filling your entire screen, that means part of the picture is being chopped off in order to fit that shape.

[MarcFBR]

No, I know what you mean, but you're misunderstanding. Dragon Ball Kai is presented on home video as a show with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Your television has an aspect ratio of 16:9, which means your screen is a different shape than the show. To be more specific, your screen is wider than the show. That's why the black bars are there: they're the space that's left over after the entire image is placed on your screen. If the image is filling your entire screen, that means part of the picture is being chopped off in order to fit that shape.

You're kind of missing the point that he doesn't care, he wants the image to fill his TV regardless (likely in a stretch mode based on his explanation.)

[Gaffer Tape]

I'm not missing his point. I totally get that. But he doesn't seem to realize that he's losing part of his image by doing that. So before he runs off willy nilly, I'd like for him to at least understand the facts.

(Where the hell are those comparison images with the circle? Can't find them anywhere!)

[JEFFMAN219]

No, I know what you mean, but you're misunderstanding. Dragon Ball Kai is presented on home video as a show with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Your television has an aspect ratio of 16:9, which means your screen is a different shape than the show. To be more specific, your screen is wider than the show. That's why the black bars are there: they're the space that's left over after the entire image is placed on your screen. If the image is filling your entire screen, that means part of the picture is being chopped off in order to fit that shape.

You're kind of missing the point that he doesn't care, he wants the image to fill his TV regardless (likely in a stretch mode based on his explanation.

I don't really care if it fits my tv or not I just wanted to know why the black bars were appearing on the blu ray release of kai.

[JEFFMAN219]

No, I know what you mean, but you're misunderstanding. Dragon Ball Kai is presented on home video as a show with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Your television has an aspect ratio of 16:9, which means your screen is a different shape than the show. To be more specific, your screen is wider than the show. That's why the black bars are there: they're the space that's left over after the entire image is placed on your screen. If the image is filling your entire screen, that means part of the picture is being chopped off in order to fit that shape.

Here is what my season 1 dvd of kai looks like on my tv.

[Gonstead]

Looks stretched to me.

[JEFFMAN219]

No, I know what you mean, but you're misunderstanding. Dragon Ball Kai is presented on home video as a show with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Your television has an aspect ratio of 16:9, which means your screen is a different shape than the show. To be more specific, your screen is wider than the show. That's why the black bars are there: they're the space that's left over after the entire image is placed on your screen. If the image is filling your entire screen, that means part of the picture is being chopped off in order to fit that shape.

Here is what my season 1 dvd of kai looks like on my tv.

Lool I just figured out that my TV was stretching the screen of my season 1 DVD to make it wide screen

[Gaffer Tape]

Ah. Okay. I see. You're right. You're not cropping the picture... You're stretching it. See, there are three ways to present a 4:3 image on a 16:9 television.

The first method is what your Blu-ray is doing. It preserves the original look and shape of the picture but necessitates the black bars (known as pillarboxing) since the image and your screen aren't the same shape. For those knowledgeable in film, this option is really the only way to go, as it's the only option that presents the entire image without distorting it in any way.

The second method is zooming. It fills up the 16:9 screen by zooming the image in to fill it. Unfortunately, that means the image is too big for the television, so the result is that the top and bottom of the image is cut off. That's what I thought was going on.

The third image is to reformat the picture itself to fit the screen, by stretching it out. This allows the entire image to fill a 16:9 display without cropping, but at the expense of distorting the image. A picture is a worth a thousand words, so I wish I could find the simple, easy to understand comparison images, but, suffice it to say, if you were looking at an image of a circle with the way your TV is set up, it would look like an oval. The characters in the screen cap you posted appear much fatter than they were drawn because they've been stretched out to fit your television.

I hope that makes sense.

EDIT: Haha, looks like in the time it took me to type that out, you've all figured this out already.

[Paradox295]

No, I know what you mean, but you're misunderstanding. Dragon Ball Kai is presented on home video as a show with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Your television has an aspect ratio of 16:9, which means your screen is a different shape than the show. To be more specific, your screen is wider than the show. That's why the black bars are there: they're the space that's left over after the entire image is placed on your screen. If the image is filling your entire screen, that means part of the picture is being chopped off in order to fit that shape.

You're kind of missing the point that he doesn't care, he wants the image to fill his TV regardless (likely in a stretch mode based on his explanation.

I don't really care if it fits my tv or not I just wanted to know why the black bars were appearing on the blu ray release of kai.

Because that's how the show was made.

DBZ was originally made before Widescreen TV's were a thing. When they made the show, they made it so it filled the screen of a TV shaped like this:



Nowadays, we have TV's that look like this:



So, we have a bit of extra space on either side of the TV. So when we have DragonBall Z, a show that looks on an old style TV like this:



We have three options we can take to put it on our new shiny widescreen TVs.

First, the option most people like. Putting black bars.



While this is the most favored option. But people who don't like this option choose not to use it because it doesn't fill the whole TV screen.

So, we can either stretch the image out...



...which distorts the picture and makes the drawings of the characters, background and special effects look too wide. Or we can zoom it in, cropping off the top and bottom of the image.



...with this, we have an image that isn't stretched, but does lose a lot of picture. And when important things are happening at the top and bottom of the picture, we miss out on stuff. This is the method that made the orange bricks (and I think the DBZ Kai DVDs) widescreen.


So, the most preferable option is to keep the black bars and get used to the image not filling the whole screen. Your TV's frame is black, so you'll get used to it pretty easy.

[Gaffer Tape]

Like I said, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Granted, while I really, really wish it was the case, I can't say I agree that most people prefer the pillarboxing. Most people who know what they're talking about prefer it, but I think the majority of people don't understand and think something is wrong if the image isn't filling their screen.

[JEFFMAN219]

Ah I see thanks for explaining it to me guys.

[JEFFMAN219]

I wonder why amazon.can were selling the blu ray version of cheaper then the DVD version

[Kid Buu]

My PS3 puts the Dragon Box DVD to 16:9, but keeps the Bluray 4:3. How do I get the DVDs at 4:3 on PS3?

[Soul]

And people wonder why FUNimation crops DBZ to 16:9*...

[Gaffer Tape]

Yeah, I'm still wondering. Because so far the tone of this thread has been confusion seeking knowledge. I've never seen, "Oh, well, I'm just not going to buy it," based solely on that. As has been demonstrated, there are multiple ways of dealing with this perceived "problem" that don't involve FUNimation ruining it for everyone.

[Ajay]

My PS3 puts the Dragon Box DVD to 16:9, but keeps the Bluray 4:3. How do I get the DVDs at 4:3 on PS3?

Turn off the upscale from 'full' to whatever the one below is.

[Kid Buu]

My PS3 puts the Dragon Box DVD to 16:9, but keeps the Bluray 4:3. How do I get the DVDs at 4:3 on PS3?

Turn off the upscale from 'full' to whatever the one below is.

It just has: Off, Double Scan, Normal, Full Screen. I tried all of them except Double Scan and it is still 16:9

Edit: Got it to work!