I'm afraid all these ratios are making my head swim. I started a list a while back, and I have such numerical figures as:
1.33:1 (This, I know, refers to the box shaped TV screen format)
1.66:1 (Referred to as semi-letterbox - for the semi-illiterate?)
4.3 letterbox
16:9 anamorphic transfer
1.78 anamorphic (Jimbo's post above)
Strange that some of these numbers have a decimal point, some have a colon, and some have both a decimal point and a colon. Hard to understand what it all means. I won't ask anyone here to try to explain any of this,
Other interesting DVD terms I've come across:
dual-layer disc (possibly good)
single-layer dual-sided disc (maybe even better!)
aliasing (not sure if that's good or bad)
artifacts (bad!)
compression (bad!)
Also something on the package of some of my DVDs say something or other "will trigger a slight pause" but it doesn't say when this pause will occur, whether it's disruptive, or if it's a feature you really want to have on your DVD.
And it would take hours to try to sort out who owns rights to what where DS is concerned ... talk about confusing!
I've read customer reviews of several movies released on DVD where the top and bottom were deliberately chopped off in order to fool the consumer into thinking they were getting the film as it appeared widescreen in theaters - that is absolutely unbelievable.
My biggest gripe with a lot of my DVDs is the low sound quality (although it's a tie with those that can't be removed from the case without bending the DVD, although that situation seems to be improving). Even with the volume control at the highest level for: Volume, Wave, SWSynth, and CD Audio, the dialogue on about 40 percent of my movie DVDs is frequently inaudible. It's always the dialogue, too - other sounds, music, etc., are plenty loud. This problem has not been the case with any DVD I have of any TV show (DS, Forever Night, and I forget what else). Also, I never ran into this problem with any VHS tape of any movie! I see this complaint about the low audio quality cropping up ever more frequently in customer reviews, but apparently the industry is oblivious to the problem. I've read a number of customer reviews where they say they've had to turn on the closed-captioning and READ the dialogue.