Blu-Ray player displaying in a small square on my tv?

[darkdream787]

This is my first Blu-Ray player so I dont know everything about them yet and this is confusing me.

Its a Sony BDP-S580

I havent had any problems playing back DVD's but I am with this specific Blu-Ray set I just bought. I just bought Dragonball Z Level 1.1 on Blu-Ray and when I play it back its just a small square about half the size of my TV screen with black bars on the top bottom left and right of it.

I have an older TV from about 2007 its an SDTV 4:3 aspect, not high definition.

I tried playing this on the high definition TV 16:9 out in the living room and it looks great. Theres only black bars on the left and right because the Blu-Ray DVD has a 4:3 aspect ratio and was not meant to be stretched to fill a whole widescreen TV. There are no black bars on the top and the bottom of the video, it stretched perfectly to fit the TV.

Why is this displaying as a little square on my TV in the center and not enlarging to fill it? at least the top and the bottom or the left and right should be touching on my TV I would think, I don't care about black bars on 2 sides of the picture if not all 4 sides can touch.

I have tinkered with every possible setting on this player and I either mess up the aspect ratio and its half the size of my TV still or the aspect ratio is just fine and its half the size of my TV.

Other Blu-Ray discs havent done this. They go widescreen like regular DVD's always have with black bars on top and bottom. This is the first time I have ever had a 4:3 Blu-Ray disc since I have only bought 3 of them so far. Am I doomed to have to watch 4:3 Blu-Ray as a tiny square half the size of my TV screen?

[jman98]

You need to go into the setup and set the output of your BluRay player to 480i. My guess is that you have some other setting or it's on Auto and it's failing to correctly detect your TV's resolution. You also need to make sure that the correct video output connection is chosen. I'm guessing that your TV uses either Component (3 cables with RCA jacks at the end) or Composite (one cable with an RCA jack at the end). Finally, there may be some kind of setting to pick for displaying video as either 4:3 or 16:9. You should pick 4:3.

[darkdream787]

You need to go into the setup and set the output of your BluRay player to 480i. My guess is that you have some other setting or it's on Auto and it's failing to correctly detect your TV's resolution. You also need to make sure that the correct video output connection is chosen. I'm guessing that your TV uses either Component (3 cables with RCA jacks at the end) or Composite (one cable with an RCA jack at the end). Finally, there may be some kind of setting to pick for displaying video as either 4:3 or 16:9. You should pick 4:3.

Its already at 480i, infact nothing but 480i will even work on the sdtv. I already have it set for 4:3, the settings are already everything you just stated.

[usually_quiet]

The video was originally 4:3. Amazon says the Blu-Ray version of the movie is also 4:3. If that is true, pillarboxes appear to be added to the video by the player to create a 16:9 aspect ratio on a widescreen TV. The Blu-Ray player apparently also adds letterbox bars so the entire 16:9 video can be seen on a 4:3 TV. Since the 16:9 aspect ratio already includes pillarbox bars, the orIginal 4:3 video has a black frame all the way around it when shown on a 4:3 TV.

Looking at the section on "Screen Settings" in the BDP-S580 manual, I'm guessing that the "TV Settings" should be 4:3. There is also a "Screen Format" setting. It looks like that should be "Fixed Aspect Ratio" not "Original Aspect Ratio", but if it is already set to "Fixed Aspect Ratio", try "Original Aspect Ratio" instead.

[darkdream787]

The video was originally 4:3. Amazon says the Blu-Ray version of the movie is also 4:3. If that is true, pillarboxes appear to be added to the video by the player to create a 16:9 aspect ratio on a widescreen TV. The Blu-Ray player apparently also adds letterbox bars so the entire 16:9 video can be seen on a 4:3 TV. Since the 16:9 aspect ratio already includes pillarbox bars, the orIginal 4:3 video has a black frame all the way around it when shown on a 4:3 TV.

Looking at the section on "Screen Settings" in the BDP-S580 manual, I'm guessing that the "TV Settings" should be 4:3. There is also a "Screen Format" setting. It looks like that should be "Fixed Aspect Ratio" not "Original Aspect Ratio", but if it is already set to "Fixed Aspect Ratio", try "Original Aspect Ratio" instead.

I have tried both Original and Fixed before posting this. It still only takes up half the TV screen and has black all the way around it.

Perhaps its those pillarboxes that I have not heard of until now because it displays perfectly on the HDTV in the living room and only has side black bars to make it 4:3 for playback. None are on the top like on my TV.

in fact, the playback reminds me of this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windowboxing

only its like that for the menu and the playback when I try to play this dragonball z set.


UPDATE / ADDED INFO

I was informed of this on an official blu-ray forum.

It looks like that because there's no such thing as a "true" 4:3 Blu Ray, all data [1920X1080 resolution variants that is] on BD's is stored in the 16:9 aspect ratio - it's part of the BD spec. The solid black side-bars are encoded into the widescreen image itself to make it appear as though it's 4:3... so while it appears to be 4:3 while watching it on your widescreen HDTV in actuality it's a 16:9 image with the DBZ imagery in the center and solid black imagery on the left and right sides. When you send this to your SD 4:3 TV it takes the 16:9 image and letterboxes it with that dead black space on the top and bottom so it fits your 4:3 TV.... and since it the image itself already has that black space on the left and right sides of the frame it creates a "windowbox" effect with black appearing on all 4 sides.

So, that's why it looks as it does on your old SD set. Nothing wrong with your set or your BD player per se - that just the way BD works. As was already said, if you want to eliminate that dead black space you'll have to use the zoom options.... but that's not optimal necessarily either because that will mess with the video quality or distort the image slightly (although you probably won't mind as you'll be using an SD set to watch it with.)