Trying to get rid of windowboxing on 4x3 tv

[JoelD]

Hello, I was wondering if anyone here has any advice. I have been going round in circles with the dvd. It looks great on 16x9 tvs but on 4x3 tvs it looks small and windowboxed. I want it to look ok for 16x9 tvs as well as 4x3. I have looked into various cropping and editing software but when I open it, it looks ok. The black at the top and the bottom is gone so there is nothing to crop. Am I going about this the wrong way?

[manono]

This may not be it, but it doesn't hurt to check. The DVD player connected to the 4:3 TV set, is it set up to output for 4:3 TVs?

[JoelD]

Well, I didn't even think about that. Actually, it was hooked up as 4:3 letterbox. If I changed it to 4:3 pan&scan it looks correct.

I had hoped to have it play the same for anyone regardless of tv without having to know they should change the setting but it seems like it might be more trouble than it is worth.

[aedipuss]

on a 16/9 tv it should look like this


on a 4:3 tv it should fill the entire screen.

[manono]

I had hoped to have it play the same for anyone regardless of tv without having to know they should change the setting but it seems like it might be more trouble than it is worth.

I'm glad you got it figured out but any time a DVD player is switched from a 16:9 TV to a 4:3 TV or vice versa, you have to go into the set-up menu and change it. Better might be to buy a second player so they don't have to be moved.

[Skiller]

By editing the IFO files of the DVD with PgcEdit you can disallow Letterbox mode. Currently, it seems, the IFOs allow both display modes – Letterbox as well as Pan & Scan. With Pillarboxed content on DVD (which is a nuisance anyway, it should be regular 4:3!) you never want the DVD-player to do Letterboxing on top of it, only Pan & Scan for 4:3 TVs (which is just a static center cut, there is no panning).

If you disable Letterbox in the IFOs a DVD-player set to Letterbox mode will do Pan & Scan nevertheless. This setting in DVD-players is a preference only, in the end the DVD-player obeys what the disc tells it to do.
If the DVD-player is set to output 16:9 video unaltered (the third option) and you let the 4:3 TV squeeze the picture on it's own (which is usually to be preferred because there is no loss in resolution), you would still get the Windowboxing though.
So there is no guaranteed way, unfortunately, to ensure it will display in full screen on a 4:3 TV, except reencoding it to proper 4:3 but that would result in a loss of quality. By disabling Letterbox in the IFOs and allowing only Pan & Scan you can at least make sure it does not matter whether the player's preference setting is Letterbox or Pan & Scan.

[r0lZ]

Skiller is right.

If I understand correctly, the original video is 4:3, but it has been encoded in 16:9 with large vertical black borders. Therefore, on a 16:9 TV, the video is displayed correctly (with the black borders), but when displayed on a 4:3 TV, it is correct if the DVD player has been configured to prefer the pan & scan mode, but not correct if the letterbox mode is selected. That means that the DVD doesn't force any particular mode, and allows the two modes. Therefore, it's the DVD player that decides what mode to use, according to the preferences of the user.

You can easily force the movie to be displayed in pan & scan mode on any 4:3 TV, regardless of the preferences of the user with PgcEdit. Just right-click on the PGC containing the movie and select Domain Stream Attributes. In the Video field, leave the aspect ratio to 16:9, and disable the "automatic letterbox" option, leaving only "automatic pan & scan". Save and burn. That should work.