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Saturday, November 22, 2008

WWE: What is so hard about 16x9 DVDs?

I don't understand this.

The WWE has been broadcasting their events in high definition for nearly a year now. But their DVDs are still formatted in the standard 4x3 aspect ratio. I bought the No Mercy DVD this month, and was quite disappointed to learn that it was not presented in 16x9 widescreen.

And this isn't like the weird Wrestlemania DVD issue, either, with the DVD deciding (depending on your TV) whether to show the event in widescreen or not. (See this post and comments.) As far as I can determine, No Mercy has no widescreen option. It's formatted in 4x3. But it's framed in 16x9. Which makes for some very poor viewing of some of the action when both wrestlers disappear off the screen because they're in the portion of the 16x9 framing that gets chopped to make it 4x3.

This is ridiculous. Every Hollywood movie I own on DVD is in widescreen. Even UFC has put out regular DVDs formatted in widescreen.

So, WWE, what's your excuse?

EDIT 11:27 a.m.: OK, I need to clarify here after doing some experimenting. This is just like the Wrestlemania DVD. No Mercy will play in widescreen if you watch it on a widescreen monitor. I just tried it in my 17-inch widescreen laptop, and I get the little WWEHD logo and everything in perfect 16x9. Which, to me, is even more stupid. I can watch all kinds of widescreen DVD content on my 4x3 TV, but the WWE is compelling me to watch its DVDs in 4x3 on a 4x3 TV, effectively requiring me to upgrade my television to a widescreen, which I'm not going to do just to watch their DVDs. (Particularly considering that I don't have an HD converter box, and no HD capable TVs.)

So let me rephrase my question to the WWE: What's your excuse for not putting out the DVDs in native 16x9 format like every Hollywood movie release has been doing for years?

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posted by Mike Jenkinson at 7:46 AM

5 Comments:

  • Just set your DVD player to 16x9 and it will play in WS

    By OpenID bosoxmole, At November 22, 2008 7:25 PM  

  • I agree with bosoxmole. If you set your DVD correctly, you'd see it like you want.

    I have the Summerslam DVD and it was widescreen, and looked great.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At November 23, 2008 6:07 AM  

  • I have my DVR set to 4x3 widescreen, and obviously, that's not working.

    I set it to 16x9, and all it did was squish the entire picture into the 4x3 TV screen, so it was all distorted. There were no black bars, as is typical when watching widescreen on a standard TV.

    By Blogger Mike Jenkinson, At November 23, 2008 8:47 AM  

  • There should be 3 options you can set your DVD player to. Something like 16:9, 4:3 LB and 4:3.

    Setting your DVD player to 16:9 is essentially telling your DVD that your *TV* is widescreen, not that you want to watch the DVD in widescreen. You need to set it to one of the 4:3 options, one of them will play is as you described with the sides chopped off and the other one (4:3 Letterbox) will show it in the 16:9 ratio with the black borders.

    By Anonymous OLP313, At November 23, 2008 9:29 AM  

  • My DVR is set for 4x3 letterbox and it does not play WWE DVDs with black borders.

    By Blogger Mike Jenkinson, At November 23, 2008 11:29 AM  

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