Hello Afterdawn Heroes and Heroines!! Again I have come upon a wierd aspect of video that I just don't understand. I ripped and burned a copy of the movie 12 Monkeys. My copy turned out great, but on both the original disc and my copy something I don't understand happens when watched. My televisions are all the old style full screen rectangle rather than the newer widescreen style. When I play widescreen DVD's on my sets it normally puts the black bars across the top and bottom of the screen. But with this movie, and rarely but occasionally others, it just crunches the image's width so that people look worse than anorexic. And their skinny heads look really wierd! Meanwhile, when I look at the same discs, both the original and my ripped copy, on my computer, it's beautifully widescreen. So what is the deal, and is there anything I can do to somehow change these to a normal widescreen image on my TV's? My sets are very good, clear, etc., and I have no interest at this time in replacing them, so please don't offer me that suggestion. But if you can explain to me why this happens, and if there is a cure, I would deeply appreciate it. Thanks so much! Fryerider
You have a few way's that DVDs are manufactured. The DVDs that have a black bar at top and a black bar at the bottom is called letter box. Which most of the time when watched on a 4:3 TV the film will not distort. Some are just widescreen and when played on a 4:3 TV if the aspect ratio for your TV is set to fit the screen with whatever is playing then it will push the sides in and distort the picture. So you need to set your TV aspect Ratio (Look at your usser guide for the diffrent settings) and it should not distort the picture. But doing this will cut off the sides of the movie and you will not get the full widescreen picture. This only works if your Fullscreen TV has an option to do this.
