Toshiba sd-3960: turning progressive scan on and off (1 Viewer)

[Chris Ph]

I recently bought a Toshiba SD-3960 DVD player ($50 at Best Buy) and an
Epson Home 10+ projector from Dell (amazing price at Dell, $1170 including a 90inch 16x9 Da-Lite Deluxe Insta-Theater screen). I already had a good home theater sound system and an older (non-progressive scan) Toshiba DVD player hooked to a ten year old 46inch 4x3 rear projection TV. The idea is to continue to use the RPTV for the kids videos and dvds but when the adults want a more theater like experience, pop the screen in front, put the projector on the coffee table (or later a ceiling mount) and watch using the projector. The dvd player is connected to the old tv with an S-video cable and to the projector with a component cable.

So far this works, but I have two questions.

1) I can find nothing in the Toshiba menus to switch between progressive scan output and interlaced output. The only choice I can see is between using the s-video or composite output versus the component output. But it seems to me that the old television would not be able to use the progressive output so it must be getting an interlaced signal. But I want the projector to get the progessive output since its de-interlacer is not very good I hear. Does the Toshiba automatically assume that any TV capable of using component inputs can handle a progressive signal?

2) The projector is native 16x9, but the only way to get a 16x9 picture is to set the DVD player to 4x3 Letterbox mode (as opposed to 4x3 pan and scan, or 16x9 mode).

Any help greatly appreciated.

 

[Chris Ph]

Ok. I've answered the progressive scan question. There is indeed a progressive on/off toggle. It just isn't offered if you don't choose component as your output. At the time I was looking I had it set to S-video.

I still can't figure out the 4x3 letterbox thing though.

Thanks again for any help.