I know there are varying opinions on whether this cropping is worthwhile or meaningful at all. I'm throwing out there what I've been told, and seen that drives me to like cropping the bars out of the video. Someone here my have a better explanation otherwise and welcome any facts explaining how this works otherwise.
- If the bars have been cropped: The TV centers the smaller video in the TV space. It sends no information to the top and bottom of the screen, IE they stay true black (or the blackest your TV can get), or turn off if your TV does that. Point is you are not processing nor displaying anything.
- If the bars have not been cropped, there is information that is being processed, send to the screen, and in fact is not true black. The pixels are being sent information and displaying the correct "color" IE they are on, they glow and have a tint.
- See the attached image, a screenshot of a 4K movie playing in MPC that shows this difference. Depending on the setup of your screen it may stand out more for some than others. If you look at the right side of the movie, there is a vertical black bar in the MPC window where there is no video file info... it is Black. If you look at the bottom directly under the video, you will (or should) see the black has a hue or "glow" to it. The pixles are displaying the information of the video encoded "black bar" Depending on how your monitor is adjusted you may or may not see much of it, but it's there. Swing the gamma one way or the other and it will stand out. The point is to realize it does show up more on some screens than others, but it's always there.
So why crop the bars:
1. file size. not much on an individual file but impactful if you have a large collection.
2. the black glow takes away from the image quality of the actual video. The blacker the background the more colors pop.
3. the bars are video info. The GPU is processing them, they take up bitrate in the file, arguably reduces the overall quality.
4. see some testing done by Marty in another thread I started on a separate topic
LINK TO : POST 22 1st Attempt with UHD - Help Please (Instel SGX??)
So if you have info to the contrary, please share. Otherwise I'm still interested in whether or not this will actually be implemented.