Playstation2 playing DVDs - 2 questions

[samarm]

I use my PS2 for playing DVD movies. In general it all works fine, but I have a couple of questions which I thought some of you guys might be able to answer:

1. Dark areas of the screen have digital artifacts. Is this a problem with my setup or do other people get this too?

2. For some reason widescreen movies play with the picture slightly stretched vertically. If I correct this using the picture format button on the TV remote then I get the correct proportions, but there are 2 even bigger black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Grr!

Any tips?

[Mr. Blue Sky]

WAG Time:

1. The PS2 is probably not the best DVD player in the world and does not have the best error correction capabilities. Also, some DVDs are not authored very well.

2. How much letterboxing you get depends on the aspect ratio of the DVD. Check the box. The higher the aspect ratio, the more apparent the black bars.

[samarm]

I've been unavoidably away from keyboard for a while, hence no reply for so long.

Thanks for the reply, Blue Sky. Yes, the PS2 is a fairly basic DVD player, so I guess the minor glitches are something I have to put up with. The answer to my question is probably: "Buy a dedicated DVD player". Maybe I will!

Re: the aspect ratio. I will look out for that on the back of the box in future. Its strange because some films seem to play full-screen (e.g. "Shawshank Redemption") automatically, while others play in letterbox format (e.g. "Forrest Gump").

I think you must have answered the questions as best as could be, as there hasn't exactly been a deluge of replies.

[raisinbread]

My upstairs neighbors had a PS2 a year before I acquired one and when they tried to play a DVD on it they had troubles with image quality. Later I heard, and I have no cite, is the PS2 is really not meant for playing DVDs because playing DVDs burns out the motor which is designed to access the disk when it had to rather than running at full tilt for two hours or more like a dedicated DVD player.

[Smeghead]

I got my PS2 shortly after they came out. I play DVDs on it far more than I do games. I've never noticed any digital artifacts or any other problems.

Nor have I seen the stretching you describe.

[Mikahw]

The stretching is usually called "anamorphic" when referring to DVDs. Not to get too technical (because I don't know that much, really...) but anamorphic DVDs offer increased resolution compared to those that aren't stretched.

There are a couple of ways to unstretch it. If you have a TV that doesn't support it, you tell your DVD player that and it'll squish the picture vertically and add black bars on the top and bottom. That negates any resolution benefit from anamorphic discs, however.

The second way is to leave your DVD player set to output it squished, and have your TV unsquish it. If it's a standard set, that means an increased black bar just like with the first method. However, many sets that offer that feature keep the resolution benefit of Anamorphic discs.

If you have a widescreen TV, you set it to unsquish the picture and the picture will take up the entire screen. That is, unless the movie is really wide (like LotR), in which case you'll have still have black bars, but they'll be a lot smaller than if you viewed it on a regular TV. Of course, if you leave this setting on while watching material that wasn't squished, the result is rather odd as they are stretched in the horizontal direction.

There's no real way to get rid of the thick black bars in wider movies. That is, unless you're one of the people who wants your screen filled no matter what, and don't care that part of the picture on the left and right sides are missing. If you are, you could always buy full screen DVDs.

[handy]

I moderated a PS2 forum & this is a new one. Anyway, first read the manual to see if it has any answers. The ps2 has a dvd diag menu, but I forgot how to access it since I never need it. Also, if you hit setup when playing a dvd, it gives you really cool options, like you can set sharpness to +2.