Hello.  Probably the things I find it most difficult to confirm for a disc are its aspect ratio, whether its pan and scan, full-frame or nether and whether the picture is anamorphic or not, etc.  By the time it's been passed from the player to the amp to the TV, there are also several opportunities for it to be ‘tinkered’ with by various bits of hardware on its journey.  Although I think I’ve got everything set up not to do this, I’m still not sure I interpret what I can see properly.  I’d be a lot more confident if there was a programme I could use on my computer that would confirm the details.  If anyone has any suggestions I’d really appreciate them.  Thanks.

Spiky:

Someof the same tools (DVD Decrypter and so forth) will also answer your question relative to a film being anamorphic or not. Most, if not all titles released within the last 6 years or so are going to be anamorphic (not applicable to Blu-Ray). As to aspect ratio, if you are more than a casual film fan, you can tell the difference between 2.35 and 1.85 on sight, the difference between say 1.85 and 1.78 or 2.39 and 2.35 and 2.40, become much more problematic and i wouldadvise you to go with the printed material on the cover (if available) for these close relations, while wecan all measure the screen, most of us have little knowledge relative to oversacn and IF you are measuring  it doesn't take an error in reading the pixels of more than a few to make a significant change in the AR data, certyainly 2.39 and 2.40 are within anybody's margin of error.

And finally pan and scan and Full Frame (fool Frame are highly technical and take  quite a knowledge base to be able to really understand it. I will give you a rule of thumb that will apply MOST but not all of the time. 1.85 is generally going to be full frame when it is pared down to 1.33, any larger AR taken down to 1.33 will generally be Pan and Scam. Full Frame and Pan and Scam do NOT yet apply to Widescreen Television, meaning that 2.35 AR scaled down to 1.85 or 1.78 is NOT yet considered anything other than Widescreen,  even though the image has been modified.

Hi,

Regarding the aspect ratio: in a previous post someone recommended "Ruler" It's available free from this site: http://www.sliver.com/ (click on ".net stuff") Then Ruler.

Jim F.

And then there are films which are a mixture between pan & scan and open matte. For example in the 4:3 version of "Total Recall" most scenes are open matte while the special effect scenes are pan & scan because those have not been rendered full frame.