aspect cropping problems with the DVP5140/37

[stubish]

Hi everybody,
well, I've tested everything, antenna, digital TV, pictures on the DVP5140. However, whenever I play any widescreen video it always crops the left and right edges (on my 4:3 television). Regardless of if I'm going via RCA or Component, regardless of if the dvd player is set to pan and scan or letterbox. This happens with commercial dvd's or avi files.

My TV doens't have a way for force the pickup of a resolution. so at this stage I'm stuck for idea's.

Any suggestions on how I can fix this? It would be nice to be able to do a custom zoom out... not just 1/2 and lower.

Any help is apprecieated.

Regards
Stuart Bishop

[guns1inger]

You will always lose a little to overscan, but that would be in the region of 5 - 7 %. If you have your DVD player set to output letterbox then the TV will receive a 4:3 image with the widescreen letterboxed inside. The TV should not zoom this image in anyway. if it does then it will also do it for standard 4:3 images, in which case you would also lose the top and bottom of the image.

[FulciLives]

Here is a link that does a good job of explaining TV OVERSCAN

http://www.mastersofcinema.org/reviews/03lookingbeyond.htm

Please note that the article mentions that some DVD players can ZOOM OUT in an incremental way so as to show the entire frame despite the TV having OVERSCAN.

However I know of no DVD player that does this ... at least nothing that you can easily buy brand new.

An Asian company called Malata made two different models of DVD players "back in the day" that were popular because they did have incremental ZOOM OUT and they were also excellent at PAL to NTSC conversion (at least at that time). However Malata has NOT made any DVD players with this ability for ages ... in fact I don't think they even really exist anymore as in I can't remember the last time I even heard anyone talk about a new Malata DVD player.

All I am saying is do not get overly excited about that article's explanation of how to solve the TV OVERSCAN issue.

In short it is just something that you need to learn to live with.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman