[SOLVED] Ultrawide Monitor for Watching 4k MKV Files

[turok_tt]

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to seek your humble advice as I am planning to get a new monitor. I’m planning to buy a new LG 38” 21:9 ultrawide monitor (38GN950) that has a resolution of 3840 x 1600. I will be using this for daily use, but a big part of it will be watching 4k movies/MKV files using VLC player. A lot of my movies are 2.40:1 aspect ratio. I just have a few questions if you don’t mind.

• If I watch these movies fullscreen using VLC player, will there be black bars on the side/top? Or will the movie fill up the entire screen for maximum immersion?
• Will the movie look stretched in full screen?
• Even though the resolution of 4k UHD movies does not match the native resolution of this monitor, how will the image look? Will it look similar to a 4k (3840 x 2160) native monitor?

Thanks for all your help!!

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

If I watch these movies fullscreen using VLC player, will there be black bars on the side/top? Or will the movie fill up the entire screen for maximum immersion?

default there will be side black bars because most movies are not intended for 21:9 viewing.

but using VLC it is all up to you how you see the video fit to the player and your desktop.

you can make it "fullscreen" where it will zoom in a bit to fit the image to your ultra-wide screen.
you can leave it at it's default aspect ratio and watch with the side bars.
or you can make the image stretch to fit the screen size.

 

[turok_tt]

default there will be side black bars because most movies are not intended for 21:9 viewing.

but using VLC it is all up to you how you see the video fit to the player and your desktop.

you can make it "fullscreen" where it will zoom in a bit to fit the image to your ultra-wide screen.
you can leave it at it's default aspect ratio and watch with the side bars.
or you can make the image stretch to fit the screen size.

Hey thanks for the response! If VLC Zooms in/stretches the video so that the entire movie fills my screen in a 21:9 ratio, how bad will the image be? Will I lose a lot of the resolution and have distorted images??

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

If VLC Zooms in/stretches the video so that the entire movie fills my screen in a 21:9 ratio, how bad will the image be?

stretching distorts the image by doing just that.
zoom will zoom into the scene enlarging the video.

just run VLC in windowed and fullscreen modes and test out the different options,
you will see how\if they affect the screen size and image quality.

Will I lose a lot of the resolution

you can't lose resolution by changing viewing options.
the quality of video always depends on the source.

if you're watching a large resolution high quality video and zoom in a bit, it will be unnoticeable.
if you're watching lower quality video, than the quality will be noticeably worse and pixelation or encoding distortion may be more noticeable.

 

[turok_tt]

Thanks! I know that the movie file itself is 16:9, but the movie itself is 21:9 aspect ratio within the 16:9 frame. The movie file itself is 16:9 because it includes the top/bottom black bars. Let's say if I initially open these movies/files on a 21:9 ultrawide, without any zooming or cropping, will the entire frame open as 16:9 ratio with the actual movie inside in a 21:9 ratio ? If this is the case, does that mean that each pixel of the movie is not mapped directly to each pixel on the monitor if the movie has lets say, 3840 horizontally? Does this mean that the video is downscaled and not mapped pixel to pixel on the monitor?

Once you zoom in so that your screen is filled, do each pixel of the movie actually map to each pixel of the monitor? The reason why im asking is because i want to retain the quality of the movie as much as possible without any blurriness.