widescreen monitor...

[chesterfield]

won't play some DVD's at anywhere near full screen. I just bout a gateway 21" widescreen monitor--reviews were great as well as an ATI X1600 pro video card. I tried to play the wide screen version of conair and it took up half of the middle of the screen--a few other movies did the same, other movies played at almost full screen but still left a little black at both the top and bottom. GATEWAY support was helpless. I have all of the latest ATI drivers, tried POWER DVD 5 and 7, as well as NERO Showtime all with the sme result--is this normal?????

thanks.....


btw--my HP laptop plays all these movies fine and is a 15.4" widescreen...

[drewzor]

deleted

[jagabo]

I think what you're seeing is normal. Widescreen movies come in many aspect ratios. Very few movies have an aspect ratio as narrow as 1.78 (16:9). Con Air, for example, is 2.35:1 so it will not fill your screen from top to bottom.

Note that DVDs really only come in two aspect ratios, 1.33 (4:3) and 1.78 (16:9). Any movie that is wider than 1.78 has black borders added at the top and bottom of the frame to fill out the difference.

I looked at the Gateway site and saw a 21" monitor that was 1680x1050. If those are square pixels (and they may not be) that's an aspect ratio of 1.6. So even 16:9 movies may not fill the height.

[manono]

You must have the earlier version of Con Air. It's non-anamorphic 4:3 widescreen 2.35:1, and is meant to play with big black bars on all 4 sides. Now, if you upgraded to the new Unrated Extended 16:9 anamorphic version, you'd see black bars only on top and bottom, because it's 2.35:1, and is wider than your 1.78:1 screen.

So, 4:3 1.33:1 movies will play with black bars on left and right. 4:3 widescreen movies will play with greater or lesser amounts of black on all 4 sides. 16:9 2.35:1 movies will fill the screen from left to right but have black above and below, and 16:9 1.78:1 or 1.85:1 movies will pretty much fill the entire screen. Your player, depending on what you use, may have zoom modes to change some of this. That's life. Learn to love it.