newbie dvd question (1 Viewer)

[jeff cr]

Hey all,

finally got a dvd player for my ht setup.Everything is working great. I have it hooked up to a 27" tv. my question is in picture size. ive watched about a dozen dvd's already and i am a little confused. All of the dvd's i have watched so far except one are shown on my tv as a a rectangular picture, so there is about 5" of black screen on the top and bottom. i have tried changing the size in the setup options on the player. the only dvd( Armaggeddon) that took up the entire screen said on the package cover "wide screen". is this normal that most movies will play like this. thanks for the input.

 

[Adam Barratt]

What you are seeing is quite normal. Movies on DVD are usually presented in widescreen, which results in black bars above and below the image.
As I'm sure you have noticed, movies in theatres are much wider than television screens, which are nearly square. In order to fit these wider movies into the square television screen, movies are often 'pan and scanned'. This process crops the sides of the movie to fill the entire television screen. Much of the film image is also thrown away, while the film's original composition is completely discarded.
Most members here prefer to watch movies in widescreen, reproducing the movie as it was seen in theatres.
Armageddon is also presented in widescreen on DVD, so it should also have black bars above and below the active image.
For a brief summary of the processes described above, take a look at this Flash animation.
Adam

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Jeff,
In addition to Adam's comments I would also add:
1) Make sure in your player setup menu you have set your TV screen output format to 4:3 (not 16:9). The 16:9 mode will stretch the picture unnaturally and everyone will look overly tall and skinny (it is intended for use with 16:9 TVs, and yours is 4:3).
2) Please check out our FAQ AND PRIMER which is linked on this forum and in my signature. Most of the basic questions you're going to encounter about DVD and HT are contained in there. Like For Example:
Why DVDs are letterboxed by Vince Maskeeper
-V