Total noobi here. I have been playing DVD-Rips on my plasma flat panel via DVD player and there is an extreme letterbox going on. I thought because my tv is a widescreen flat panel I would not have the letterbox or it would not be so pronounced. I am not into the idea of zooming or some other aspect ratio that streches the screen and reduces quality or takes things out of view. Is this just the way it goes or am I missing soemthing? Thanks
Start by checking your standalone DVD player. If it has a setting in it's menu for TV type. Make sure it's set for wide-screen and not standard TV.
Thanks will check that, I know it is something obvious that i am missing or the file I have is doing it, maybee all I have to do is use Widescreen versions?
If the DVD in the DVD player is widescreen, that information is included in the files. The DVD player then decides how the video will be displayed - depending on the information that it has about your TV screen type. If it knows your screen is a standard TV, then the movie is shown in letterbox.
You will see "letter boxing" on wide screen TV because not all movies(almost none) are made with 16:9 (1.78) aspect ratio, which is your wide screen TV. Majority of movies are made 1.87 up to 2.4 ratio. On 2.4 you will see heavy black bars on top and bottom.
Cool, I am going to check the DVD player itself, see what changes, also the quality was good but not great, but that has allot to do with the file, need to figure out if there is anything else that may make it look better, becuase honestly the picture of the same dvd looked 10 times better on an old Sony TV downstairs, less grainy, anyway i appreciate the responses.
Before you come to any conclusion about your new flat panel TV, check the bitrate of your burn. From what you are saying it looks like it is really low or recorded in low resolution. Old TV, I assume, has smaller screen that is why it looks better. This is for bitrate check. http://www.tecoltd.com/bitratev.htm
my DVD was set to 4:3 instead of 16:9, made a big diff. but also the quality was due to the specific files because other files looked great......Thanks for all the help!!!@!
