My Widescreen TV Is Cropping Out The sides Of My DVD'S.

[big_boi97]

I just got a new widescreen tv, and when I watch videos that's wider than 1.78:1 (widescreen) it crops out the sides of the video. It doesn't always crop it down to 1.78:1 though, it just crops it.

For example, when I play a 1.85:1 dvd it crops it down to 1.78:1 so I lose a bit of the sides.

But when I play a 2.35:1 dvd it letterboxes the video, but it doesn't letterbox the video enough. So I still miss out on part of the sides. You can find an example of this below.

This is what I should be seeing.
http://i29.tinypic.com/2cxuy6a.jpg

But this is what I'm seeing.
http://i30.tinypic.com/2n1s2lx.jpg

If you look in the pictures above, you can see that on the right of the screen the lamp has been cropped out a bit. Also on the left the chair has been cropped out a little.

I have already changed the DVD player settings from 4:3 to 16:9 so I'm confused as to why it's cropping out the sides of my dvd's. Please help me fix this.

Thank you.

[jman98]

Welcome to the forums. You need to learn what "Overscan" means. I suggest taking a look at our Glossary link at the top left under "WHAT IS". Unfortunately overscan is normal for all TVs. If you are very lucky, your new TV will have an option to turn off overscan, but most TVs don't allow this to be turned off.

Overscan is done because sometimes there is garbage at the outer boundaries of TV signals. If consumers saw this, 99% of them would say that their TV is "broken" and demand a new one. So the easiest way to deal with customers who know nothing is to just turn on overscan for everything because most people won't notice it.

[big_boi97]

Oh I understand it now. Thank you very much. I think you're right. I didn't know what overscan was untin now, but it definitely sounds like your right. Thanks for telling me that, I actually am gonna study a video course so I like to know everything about them.

I have been worrying about this all day, trying to fix it. But now I see that there was nothing to fix. Hopefully my tv has a setting to turn off overscan.

Thanks a lot.

[guns1inger]

What you also need to understand is that all your life you have been missing the edges of your TV - DVDs, video tapes, broadcast TV - all of these have had their edges hidden. And you haven't noticed or missed them.

That said, the example you have provided seems extreme, which leads me to either suspect a particularly cheap and poorly designed TV, or a setup issue.

[netmask56]

What you are seeing or rather not seeing is certainly not overscanning (or it's overscanning gone mad!) - overscan tends to be a fraction of what is happening to you and is far less likely on a LCD or Plasma TV. With old fashioned CRT TV's the scanning at the edges was quite non linear and overscanning by the manufacturers was a deliberate strategy, not so with LCD or Plasma.

If you have a media player that you can rip a DVD to and play it into your TV hopefully by the HDMI input or component check and see if there is any difference. Many DVD players just don't handle widescreen movies very well when fed into 16:9 TV's (ie 1.85:1 or 2.35:1) if the DVD being played is merely letterboxed rather than an anamorphic release. Check these site

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/lbx.htm

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/anamorphic235demo.html

[jagabo]

The overscan in the sample image was about 10 percent (90 percent of the width visible). That's more than is typical for HDTVs (usually around 5 percent) but not unheard of.

[tomlee59]

Netmask56 has an important point. Your symptoms are consistent with overscan, but if your new widescreen TV is not CRT-based, then conventional overscan isn't the problem. If it is a CRT display, then yes, it's overscan. If it really bothers you greatly, the amount of overscan can often be adjusted by tweaking some internal controls (sometimes -- but rarely -- the necessary adjustments are externally accessible). However, if you are not comfortable poking around the innards of electrical gear, this is not recommended.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Some HDTV's have a setting called Just Scan or 1:1 Pixel Mapping, enabling it allows you to see the entire picture.

[jagabo]

It goes by different names on different HDTVs. Samsung uses Just Scan. It's found mostly on the higher end 1080p sets. Although I have a 19" Samsung 720p LCD with it (it's not really 1:1 pixel mapping on that set but it shows the whole picture).

[guns1inger]

My Samsung will only allow Just Scan on HDMI connections and VGA connections, but not on Component or s-video connections.

[manono]

In addition to the TV overscan, it's also very possible that the DVD player itself is cropping some of the picture. Probably more than half of the players out there crop at least something and some of them crop significant amounts. I agree that 10% is a lot but not unheard of, especially when both factors are taken into account. For example, this is what one review says about cropping in the well known Philips DVP-642:

...has some excessive pixel cropping (5 on each side)...

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/shootout.cgi?function=search&articles=all&type=...PhilipsDVP-642