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Old 22-12-2003, 20:46
Kered
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Hi

Probably a lot of folk here are saying "neither!" to the question raised, and that letterbox 16:9 is the answer, but maybe you can help, anyway...

New Cyberhome DVD402 from Richer, old 25" Panasonic tv. My wife doesn't like letterbox, so I tried the DVD player setup, to change it to "pan & scan", but so far, with the first two Lord of the Rings dvds, this doesn't work. Plan B, for her, is to use 2x zoom, which sorts her problem with black bars, but introduces frequent picture judders (every minute, more or less).

So two questions:

1) Does "pan & scan" setup in the DVD player not work, because it's faulty, or because you can only get it if the dvd (disc) is encoded for it?

2) Are the picture judders on zoom a fault, or is that common to all players?

Hope someone can help.

Kered
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Old 23-12-2003, 07:26
monkey75
 
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the disc would need to have the pan and scan info on it for that setting to work, dont know many that do.

it probably is a common thing, its not really meant for that function and probably wasnt intended for extended use.

my advice, stick to VHS if it causes her that many problems. Or maybe explain why its a good thing, a chopped lotr is indeed a great crime
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Old 23-12-2003, 09:23
GDK
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The only widescreen anamorphic DVDs I've seen that support fullscreen on a 4:3 screen are some of those made from 16:9 source material. By that I mean, mostly, TV programmes that were made for 16:9 broadcast. These DVDs are encoded to allow display of the central, 4:3, portion of the 16:9 recording if the DVD player is set to 4:3 for the screentype with no letterboxing.

Most movie DVDs, OTOH, with source material even wider than 16:9, won't do fullscreen on a 4:3 TV. If you set your DVD player to 4:3 and no letterbox, you still get a heavily letterboxed 4:3 output.

Hope that helps.

Graeme

P.S. It'd be better if you could persuade your wife to let you get a WS TV! Even then, though, she probably wouldn't be happy as you still get slight letterboxing for most movies. Oh well, there's nothing else for it! You'll have to change the wife!

Last edited by GDK : 23-12-2003 at 09:54.
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Old 23-12-2003, 13:53
Orbitalzone
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Really the options are to use letterbox mode and see the movie how it was meant to be. I've seen the zoom mode on a Samsung DVD player work quite well - I set up the player for a luddite who didn't want those black bars on his 4/3 TV.... he'd rather get the 'full picture' (I know... I know.... ) and the image quality was better than VHS albeit missing the point about DVDs....this didn't suffer from any shudder like you seem to get....

Or it's time to get a new TV in the january sales!
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Old 23-12-2003, 20:12
meltcity
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Originally posted by Kered

1) Does "pan & scan" setup in the DVD player not work, because it's faulty, or because you can only get it if the dvd (disc) is encoded for it?

2) Are the picture judders on zoom a fault, or is that common to all players?

Hope someone can help.

Kered
I've used zoom regularly on both Panasonic and Toshiba players and there was no judder, so it sounds like your player could be faulty.

Pan & Scan should work but very few discs support it. Using zoom mode is fine when watching 16:9/1.85:1 ratio movies on a 4:3 set. The problem is when watching wider 2.35:1 ratio movies that you 43% of the picture to the left and right. I wouldn't recommend zooming any further than 16:9 when watching 2:35 movies.
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Old 23-12-2003, 23:46
Kered
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thanks to all for the advice
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