Do All Blu-Ray Discs Cutoff Picture?

I wanted to compare the quality of a Blu-Ray disc with the same movie (National Treasure 2) recorded in HD on the DVR. When I was doing this, I noticed that the picture was a bit bigger on the top and bottom of the screen from the recorded DVR content. I figured that the Blu-Ray just showed the whole picture and the one I recorded just cutoff some of the sides, but no that is not the case. The Blu-Ray of NT2 is in letterbox format, and I tried adjusting several settings on the player, but to no avail. Also some of the previews are shown in the bigger format that are on the blu-ray disc, so it seems to only be the movie that's missing anything.

My question is, are all Blu-Ray discs like this and we miss some of the movie for no apparent reason? It seems pretty lame that they would cut off some of the top and the bottom just to make it seem more widescreen than it really is. Once again the movie definitely has more picture information from the HD content I recorded from the movie channel, and it isn't just a case of it appearing that way. Neither of them are missing anything on the left or right side, just the blu-ray is missing some of the top and bottom.

I tried searching for this in Google, but I really don't know how to go about finding the answer to such a thing. My first few searches yielded no helpful results.

What kind of TV do you have?

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Originally Posted by Pepsi

What kind of TV do you have?

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I am currently using a projector, though I'm not sure what sort of difference that would make as I was using the identical HDMI connection to see the difference with the same projector. The type of Blu-Ray Player I'm using is a Panasonic DMP-BD35K with the latest firmware (at least as of one week ago).

That sounds more like the way the movie was edited.

I have a DVD rip of The Dark Knight and a Blu-Ray copy of the same movie and I watched it and looked at both movies and there isnt anything cropped off. Specifically I used this scene:
http://i43.tinypic.com/24626jc.jpg
http://i41.tinypic.com/sghav9.jpg
I looked at the hairline on his head and found that in both the bluray and the dvd his hairline is right at the top of the frame.

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Originally Posted by Anonymous D

That sounds more like the way the movie was edited.

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You mean the way it was edited for the Blu-Ray version? I don't understand why they'd leave out some of the picture for it though when they show the full thing on HD movie channels.

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Originally Posted by Ebola

I have a DVD rip of The Dark Knight and a Blu-Ray copy of the same movie and I watched it and looked at both movies and there isnt anything cropped off. Specifically I used this scene:
I looked at the hairline on his head and found that in both the bluray and the dvd his hairline is right at the top of the frame.

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The Dark Knight may be different though, as I think they filmed that in a wider format than many movies. Also in the IMAX parts it fills in the top and bottom parts just like movies on the HD movie channels (at least on the Blu-Ray version), so even if it does cutoff a bit of the image it at least makes some sense to do so with that movie.

Another explanation is that some widescreen DVDs have been doing the same thing as well, so it may show more of the picture than the full screen DVDs, but still not the entire complete picture. Though a lot of widescreen DVDs seem to take up the whole potential screen area (the projector I use has a widescreen native resolution in case there was any doubt). I just wondered if this was a known thing that is done for a particular reason or if it is some sort of problem with my setup. Oh and I also tried using a component connection with the same result.

The point of widescreen is so you can see it how it was meant to be seen, I cant really see why they would cut parts off.

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Originally Posted by Anonymous D

The point of widescreen is so you can see it how it was meant to be seen, I cant really see why they would cut parts off.

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Yeah me neither, it seems quite ridiculous. Maybe they just want attention to be focused a bit narrower, but I don't know it just seems weird and I'm still hoping someone reads this who is an absolute guru and can tell me exactly what the deal is with this.

Pan and scans are still used for some widescreen content, depending on the original aspect ratio.

http://www.projectorcentral.com/235_home_theater.htm

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Originally Posted by Anonymous D

The point of widescreen is so you can see it how it was meant to be seen, I cant really see why they would cut parts off.

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A handful of Mel Brooks' films were shot fullscreen and then cropped vertically to produce widescreen versions for DVD. A pretty fucking dumb move, but it has happened.

That said aside from animated features I doubt anything is shot in a fullscreen aspect ratio these days.