Reduce picture size on TV

[NDMMackay]

I have no idea where to post this or how to phrase the question.

I have a 50" TV. I subscribe to satellite TV. Some of the channels are HD (1080p). They look great, especially rugby.

But, I have a (BluRay) player connected to the TV, which I use to watch DVDs, They don't look too good on a 50" TV. They looked fine on my 32" TV.

Is there any way to make a DVD connected to a 50" TV only use 32"s of the screen? I presume you understand what I mean.

[mike20021969]

Is there any way to make a DVD connected to a 50" TV only use 32"s of the screen?

I doubt it - but you'd have to check the hardware's instructions to be sure.

I'm surprised manufactures didn't/don't include an option to view at a sources native resolution on a larger screen - even if that does mean pillarboxing & letterboxing it.

Upscaling a DVD to fit an HD screen looks bad, and only gets worse the larger the display.

[jman98]

mike_ is entitled to his opinions, but I really can't agree with anything he said.

"I doubt it" means nobody has ever heard of this even being possible, but he's covering himself just in case it is. I've never heard of this and I'll tell you that if it is even possible, then you probably have the only TV that can do this.

We get posts here all the time from people bitching about letterbox and pillarbox bars. So that would go over like a ton of bricks to natively display DVD that way.

I call bs that upscaling DVD "looks bad". It depends on a lot of factors. What type of connection do you have from the BluRay player to the TV? HDMI? Something else? What resolution is your BluRay player set to output? TVs also have some default settings from the factory that are less than optimal. And if you sit too close to the TV for its size, well, honestly there isn't much you can do to fix that if you can't move further back. But generally speaking, upscaling DVD to HD resolutions works fine for almost everybody.

[NDMMackay]

jman98: We are not talking about people who do not understand aspect ratio, postbox and letterbox. Ignore them.
All I want is to "downscale" so that a DVD movie takes up a little block in the middle of the screen and not the whole 50".

mike20021969: Yes. The equipment these days doesn't understand the concept of native or original resolution.

[smrpix]

jman98: We are not talking about people who do not understand aspect ratio, postbox and letterbox. Ignore them.
All I want is to "downscale" so that a DVD movie takes up a little block in the middle of the screen and not the whole 50".

My TV has a Picture-in-Picture mode with a variety of scale and position options. Maybe you can try something like that.

[NDMMackay]

smrpix: And buy a new TV? The connection from player to TV is HDMI.

jman98: U[scaling DVD to TV does look bad when the supplier has put too many 30 minute episodes on a single disk.

Years ago I had a TV that when you selected "Original" it WAS original width and height. If you wanted full-screen you had to use a zoom mode.

[johns0]

Easy fix,buy a 32" tv.

[Cornucopia]

There are still models which use 1:1 pixel mapping (and so will not resize), but they're getting rarer.

Scott

[johns0]

I have a sony 46" which has 1:1 pixel and it lets me resize but not custom resizing,just zoom,wide zoom and full.

[gll99]

My older Seiki Blu-ray player has a zoom that goes 2x, 3x and 4x but also goes 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4 size. The half size zoom displays a normal widescreen (black bars top and bottom, could be a 1.85:1 DVD) at 30" diagonally windowboxed (black all around) on a 46" 16:9 TV.

btw) The original picture is not BR quality but it looks pretty good on a 46" tv. Maybe check your player settings. I let the BD player upscale the image instead of the TV and output via HDMI.

Another point:
If you output 720p it may scale the image down too (I didn't try it on the Seiki). I tested on my PS3 video settings BD/DVD upscaler set to double scale and it produced a windowboxed image of about 37" diag.

[cornemuse]

I have a 42" Olevia TV, (yes, its getting ooold! but excellent image & does a few things w/remote noone else can do), I feed among other things, to it, wd live, dune 303, and Argosy, media players. I set them to output at 720 rez 'cause the 'old' tv cant handle 1080 in 'fast action' flicks. the colores tend to bleed together & look 'smeared'. No problem at 720, & no issues with image size at either setting. 480 cuts the pic size on screen down tho. Only problem with the tv is the remote. Most buttons do not work anymore, fortunately the few functions I desire still work on it. The wdlive & dune settings I didnt mess with.

[TreeTops]

My Pany 42" TV looks absolutely super when DVD's are up scaled. But it's the Blueray player that is doing the up scaling not the TV.

[Cornucopia]

Could also be the OP's expectations are undeservedly high.

Scott

[True Colors]

There may not be a "direct" solution to this........i.e., there is probably not one setting to change which will magically do what you want.

However, if you have a computer with an HDMI output, then there is at least one work around solution available to you.

Make a copy of your DVDs onto your computer.

Connect your computer to your TV with an HDMI cable.

Use MPC-HC to play the video files on your computer and output to the TV.

MPC-HC is a video player which allows you to manipulate the frame size to your liking.

TC

[lingyi]

I have no idea where to post this or how to phrase the question.

I have a 50" TV. I subscribe to satellite TV. Some of the channels are HD (1080p). They look great, especially rugby.

But, I have a (BluRay) player connected to the TV, which I use to watch DVDs, They don't look too good on a 50" TV. They looked fine on my 32" TV.

Is there any way to make a DVD connected to a 50" TV only use 32"s of the screen? I presume you understand what I mean.

What picture settings are you using? A lot of people have their settings too high, especially sharpness and color going for that "screen pop" that makes less than 1080p sources look really bad.

[hello_hello]

My TV has an option when playing video (depending on the input type and TV resolution) which I think is accessed by the "Tools" button on the remote. It lets me choose to play video in it's original size. The option doesn't always appear, but it works perfectly when playing video via the TV's own media player.
My Bluray player can connect to the TV at different resolutions (SD, 720p or 1080p, I think) and the TV would then upscale to fullscreen if need be. Normally I just leave it connecting at 1080p and let the player upscale, but if the player is connecting at a lower resolution, maybe the TV would give me the same "original size" option? I haven't tried it, but it might be worth a look.

Mind you I have a 51" Plasma and I find most DVDs look fine when upscaled to full screen. They don't suddenly take on a 1080p appearance, but they're quite respectable.