I just got a 16:9 aspect ratio TV. The first two movies I play on it, The League of Extraordinary Gentlement and Scarface both have the black bars top and bottom, and appear a little distorted. Are some DVD’s just recorded that way, so that they black out the tops and bottoms, or am I missing something in the setup of either the TV or DVD. I have been playing around and can’t seem to get the movie to fill the whole screen. Any suggestions?
You need to tell the DVD player that it’s connected to a 16:9 screen instead of a 4:3.
Look in you owner’s manual. My 51" Hitachi will do 4:3 standard, 4:3 widescreen, 4:3 zoom and corresponding versions of 16:9. The relevant button on the remote is labelled “aspect”.
Do the DVDs say “anamorphic widescreen” or just “widescreen?” If the latter, then the video is recorded at 4x3 and the letterboxing is in the actual signal. If it says “anamorphic,” then you need to make sure your DVD player is configured to play on a 16x9 screen.
Note that super-widescreen formats like 2.35x1 (anamorphic scope) will still be letterboxed, even on a 16x9 TV. Here is a good example.
A 1.85x1 format film will fill your 16x9 TV almost perfectly. (1.85x1 example.
First, you need to configure your DVD player and tell it that you have a widescreen (16x9) TV set. Your TV remote should have a button (mine’s called Wide Mode) which switches between different viewing modes. On my sony I need to put it on “Full” usually.
If the DVD is anamorphic (most new DVDs are) you just put it in “Full” mode. You will see black bars on top and bottom if it’s a really wide film (most epic films are very wide). If it’s a typical hollywood romantic comedy or movie with Adam Sandler it will probably just be 16x9 which means it will fit the entire screen.
If the DVD is not anamorphic there will be black bars on top, bottom, left, and right. Your TV might have a Zoom feature which will cause the picture to fill the screen, though there might be some very minor distortion.
Subtitled movies that are not anamorphic should probably not be zoomed if the subtitles were placed below the picture. In this case you won’t see them after you Zoom.
I found all the right changes to make and did so, thanks to the advice here. It seems the 1983 film Scarface, which I watched last night, was at 2.35:1 so I had to zoom it to mostly get rid of the black lines. I will see what tonight’s movie brings in the way of format.
If you zoom the picture to get rid of the black bars on the top and bottom of a 2.35:1 aspect ration movie then your also cropping the picture on the left and right. Are you sure you don’t want to see the whole movie?
I think I get it now. Some so-called widescreen versions are actually coded as letterbox format so that no matter what you view them on they have the black lines. Newer ones tend to be anamorphic and will show fill a 16:9 TV completely, provided I have the DVD set correctly. Actually the TV remote come with a nifty little button called “aspect” that allows you to change the aspect ratio on the fly. I scrolled through that a few times and decided I liked the 4:3 zoom 1 the best, but I did notice it cut off some of the edges, but not much. What I found strange was that when viewed at 16:9 it seemed slightly distorted, stretched horizontally, but did not at 4:3.
Watch that zoom button. If you use it on Ben Hur (an extra wide film) you will be lose more than 50% of the picture!
More info here: