I've just bought the Cyberhome CH- 402 DVD Player and I'm watching a wide letterbox movie which I've satisfactorily zoomed in at x2 to watch with a bigger picture. How do I turn off the x2 zoom always-on-screen graphic - It's a US-bought player for $70 but does the UK version of this player also have this annoying permant on-screen display when using zoom? Can anyone recommend an alternativer DVD player where the onscreen zoom display disappears so you can actually watch the movie uninterrupted? Thanks!

Kevin Clark

why would you want to zoom it? You're losing out on half of the movie!

Not to mention the quality downgrade issue

Ok, let me be more specific. I want to find out which DVD player allows me the option to zoom in a little on a letterbox movie so that it becomes more widescreen on a 4:3 TV - in other words the centre is zoomed a little resulting in a little loss on the left and right but less black bars on TV. I've tried the Cyberhome 402 but it's x2 facility crops off a little of the top and bottom as well. Is there any DVD player that allows infinite zoom or a zoom whereby the top and bottom are not cropped when it zooms in?

If you are using a Widescreen tv, then that will have a ZOOM mode. I also know some one with a low cost Orion 4:3 tv which has the same function!

As for DVD player settings. I have a menu which I set that tells the DVD player which shape tv I have connected. I don't have any other such ZOOM in functions which I can force upon the picture which are on the DVD player.

I have also noticed that some DVD discs (older one's mainly), have some slight bars top and bottom (not the really fat ones), and using my tv ZOOM mode on these makes the people look very tall. To avoid that, those discs have to display those slight black bars while the tv is set to 16:9 Wide mode.

Just change the dvd player to output in 4x3. It will do the cropping for you without zooming (although why anyone would want to crop any of the picture even ona 4:3 tv is beyond me)

Forget the 'Zoom' function on a DVD player. It is nothing more than a gimmick and serves no real purpose.

High on your priorites when looking for a DVD player should be things like...pic quality, reliability, RGB SCART, S-Video out, SCART in for passthru...well known brand, multiregion etc.

Enjoy the film as it's meant to be seen


Dave RJR

That'll be films made in 2.35:1 ratio that you are describing and are alot more commonplace than you may think, even with newer films.