widescreen settings

[moviegeek71]

I have a Samsung 46" 16:9 HDTV and Samsung HD-960 DVD player:

The IMDb website has that this movie was filmed in 1.85 and that the DVD is 1.78 (although the DVD has 1.77 printed on it). I am having trouble getting it to display correctly on my 16:9 HDTV. I've tried all the settings on the TV and the DVD player and it looks skewed. I tried the DVD set on 4:3 Letterbox, 4:3 Pan&Scan, and 16:9 Widescreen ... and the TV on 16:9, Wide<>Fit, 4:3, and Just Scan.

I have not had this problem with any other 1.85 or 1.78 DVD ever before*. The only way that I can get it to look unstretched is with the TV on 4:3 which displays the picture with black lines on the top and bottom of the screen and left and right, this is the only way that the picture frames of the movie is not skewed. The DVD player is on 16:9 and the TV on 4:3 that is the only way but there are big black bars all around the picture. This movie is 1.85 and should fit the entire TV screen.

It is almost as if the movie was played from it's 1.78 (16:9) source and recorded to 1.33 (4:3), including the black bars, to the DVD.

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0088194/dvd
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0095253/dvd *and now this movie too

[jagabo]

The DVD is "widescreen letterbox", not widescreen anamorphic. That means it has a 1.85 picture with black borders add to the top and bottom to make a 4:3 frame. Watch it at 4:3.

[moviegeek71]

Ah, so any time I see "Widescreen Letterbox" then I will now know to set my TV to 4:3 aspect ratio. Thanks.

[jagabo]

Does the TV or DVD player have a zoom mode that will let you zoom in so that the 16:9 portion of the 4:3 video fills the screen? It will not be as clear of course.

[moviegeek71]

No, it has "wide fit" and "just scan" but I know what you're talking about because my RCA 46" LCD TV would do that zoom feature and it worked good. This Samsung has wide fit that will fit the width of the screen but the RCA would zoom the whole screen top and bottom.

This "letterbox" formatt is the only one I have trouble getting it to fit the screen, I'll just have to watch it at 4:3 with the black bars.

[samijubal]

There should be a setting on the TV for non anamorphic DVDs. It may only work in 480i or 480p though.

[moviegeek71]

Okay, thank you, this is what I found. When I put the TV on "Zoom 1" and the DVD player on 480P the screen is filled and the picture is not stretched. Thanks to everyone that helped me figure this out. At this point, I've only need to do this for 1.85 Letterbox movies.

[moviegeek71]

No, it has "wide fit" and "just scan" but I know what you're talking about because my RCA 46" LCD TV would do that zoom feature and it worked good. This Samsung has wide fit that will fit the width of the screen but the RCA would zoom the whole screen top and bottom.

I just noticed that in one of my post I said it had "widefit" and not "zoom" and then the post I made before this one I said that I put it on "zoom 1".

That made me realize that on this Samsung TV it has 1080p "widefit" setting and on 480p it has the "zoom" setting.