I have 3 films (maybe more) such as Yeh Dillagi (YRF), Jab Pyaar Kisise Hota Hai (Spark) and Keemat: They Are Back (Eros) which when viewed on newer 16:9 TVs appear windowboxed with a black border all around the image. I just had a few questions...

1) I can understand these DVDs may have been made for 4:3 TVs in mind quite a while back, but does that mean that the OAR of these movies was 4:3 as well?

2) I appreciate pillarbox and letterbox as that was how the film is intended to be watched, but surely a windowboxed film is far from what it should be?

I am not sure about Keemat, since I don't know which movie that is, but the other two movies are both originally shot with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The problem of window boxing that you are facing, is because these DVDs have not been encoded for 16:9 TVs (16x9 Anamorphic), as they should have been. Unfortunately the short sightedness of the Indian home video industry and also the Indian customer is responsible for this.

Unfortunately that trend has been forwarded to blurays;( if u have seen Eagle Gupta? What an atrocity and butchering;(

Windowboxing (different from pillarboxing) helps you see the "full picture" even on TVs with factory-set overscan. That's the advantage.

"4:3 anamorphic" DVDs may be seen now and then where, after windowboxing a 4x3 film onto a 1.85:1 frame, the resultant frame is coded anamorphically -- though this results in reduced resolution. The advantage is that when you play this off a DVD player that's set to 16x9 -- onto a 16x9 TV, you get a picture in proper aspect ratio without any aspect distortion.

However, new blu-ray players can do a "smart play" for 4x3 movies by automatically generating pillars on left and right.

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Try playing your DVDs with different settings on your player -- are you playing them off a DVD player?

I've played all of them on a blu-ray player and the windowbox appears automatically. When zooming in from the TV settings I can get it appear letterboxed.

Some problem with setting on resolution in the player I can think off!