My widescreen VCDs: How will they look on a widescreen TV?

[nocarebear]

I don't have WS TV right now, but I'm sure I will somewhere down the road. Considering I didn't encode my VCDs with anamorphic, will the black bars still be on the screen or will the TV automatically adjust for it?

[SoCalMK]

You will get black bars on all 4 sides.

[Darth Paris]

Most DVD Players have a zoom functon you could use to adjust.

[nocarebear]

You will get black bars on all 4 sides.

Even the sides will have it? I would have thought only the top and bottom.

Most DVD Players have a zoom functon you could use to adjust.

The thing about zoom is that it will make the picture the even less clear than it already is.

[Nilfennasion]

The VCD format does not support 16:9 Enhancement, so on any display that automatically changes the shape of the picture, you will simply get black borders on four sides. If you manually adjust the picture shape, it will take advantage of the widescreen shape, but it will look like crap.

So the short answer is yes. Even if you did try to encode your VCD anamorphically, it won't look pretty on anything but a 66cm widescreen set, which is really a waste of money anyway. Even displays with the ability to auto-adjust will not do this because they have to see a flag in the video stream in order to do it.

[energy80s]

All you need to do is to zoom in on your widescreen TV display. Usually there are 4 modes (4:3, 16:9, zoom and auto-switching) just select the zoom mode and that will get rid of your black bars on the top and bottom of your picture. You will notice a deteriotion of picture quality as it is only a VCD image source, but it will work and will keep the correct aspect ratio.