WINDOWBOXING... Caused by DVD Player / Plasma...???

[Lathe]

I would appreciate if someone could clarify something for me about this. I do understand the basic concept of 'Windowboxing' and I know that it is done primarily to prevent overscan. (I'm not really thrilled at the concept)

I have a Maxent 50" Plasma, which although modest presents an excellent picture quality; I also have a slightly older Momitsu Region Free PAL to NTSC DVD player which has normal 'Zoom' capability.

Now, here is the thing. In all the reading I've done about Windowboxing (and, believe me I am going BLIND, and NOT for enjoyable reasons! : ) I seem to get the idea that the Windowboxing, say done by Criterion for example, renders a fairly small or thin area around the picture (maybe an inch at most) on all 4 sides. Okay, I could live with that, especially with a nice 50" screen. BUT, and it's a VERY BIG BUT like Marah Carrey's, I have a few DVDs, some very nice high quality versions such as the Collector's Edition of 'VERTIGO' and the Criterion version (I THINK) of 'JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBURG' (both with a 16x9 ratio!) that when I go to play them on my Plasma for some weird and mysterious reason the picture is Windowboxed so dang small that I have to use the 'Zoom 1' setting on my DVD Player to fill the screen properly. Now, here's the weird part... we are not talking here about just a 1/2 inch or even a 1 inch black border on all 4 sides; we are talking about around like 6 inches or so... ON ALL 4 SIDES!

In all the reading I've done, ON ONE has mentioned this happening at all. What ON EARTH could be causing the picture to be so EXTREMELY Windowboxed??? Granted, that on the first Zoom setting I have VERY, VERY carefully compared the resolution, or more acurately the picture quality between the Windowboxed and the Zoomed picture and quite honestly there isn't quite enough difference to get horribly upset about, but STILL there is indeed definitely some noticeable but moderate loss of quality.

So, is this normal? I have checked all of the settings of both the DVD Player and the Plasma and all of the aspect ratios and initial screen size & resolutions are correctly set up. And also I am using a HDMI to DVI connector between them. I THINK that the beginning menu fills the screen normally, but when it goes to the film itself it is a considerably smaller image.

If ANYONE has ANY idea at all WHY I am getting such a small Windowboxed image or if it IS indeed the way the DVD is SUPPOSED to look, then PLEASE by all means let me know!

Thank you!

______ L@th3

[guns1inger]

If your DVD player is incorrectly set up to output 16:9 material as letterboxed, then you will get a "windowboxed" images because as far as the TV is concerned, the incoming signal is 4:3

[Lathe]

Thank you kindly for the thought, but then clearly ALL of my DVDs would look that way

No..., like I stated, my setting for screen output for my DVD Player is set for 16x9. The ONLY other choices are 4x3 Pan & Scan and 4x3 Letterboxed. I even tried changing the resolution for the output specifically for one of the discs... No change...

I guess for SOME strange reason my player must 'SEE' these few odd discs and render them like you say, I don't know... It sure is very curious how this only happens to a few select DVDs.

Thanks anyway!

[Ai Haibara]

Have you tried playing those DVDs on your computer, to see if the movies play the same way there?

The video on those particular DVDs could possibly, actually, be encoded with the letterboxing bars as part of the video.

[Lathe]

Have you tried playing those DVDs on your computer, to see if the movies play the same way there?

The video on those particular DVDs could possibly, actually, be encoded with the letterboxing bars as part of the video.

Interesting that you should ask that; you'd THINK that I would have thought of trying that! But, NOOOOOO...

Well, what's interesting is that I used 2 different software players to play 'VERTIGO', VLC Media Player which plays EVERYTHING beautifully and also Power DVD, and on both of them when I displayed the film in a 'Windowed' format (as opposed to 'Full Screen') and I manually stretched the edges of the window to fit the screen it DID look EXACTLY like it does on my Plasma! It is sitting in a greatly reduced area with easily 25 - 30% of the screen black around all 4 sides!

HOWEVER... with both players if I clicked on the 'Full Screen' mode the movie would show perfectly! Isn't that the strangest thing?!!! So, it's like even both software players show it EXTREMELY Windowboxed, but in the 'Full Screen' mode it's like the players correctly recognize the proper resolution and aspect ratio. Very odd indeed...

Wouldn't that suggest then that most likely somehow my DVD Player is not correctly 'Reading' the resolution properly, or when the signal gets sent to my Plasma somehow or another it is not displaying it proplery???

Again, it is ONLY with a few DVDs that it does this, but in EVERY case where it does, if I use the 1st Zoom setting on my DVD Player it then adjusts the image to fill the screen properly except it DOES slice off just a tad on the sides...

I certainly appreciate the suggestions but I sure am getting VERY curious as to EXACTLY what the deal is...