Wdescreen Menus? (1 Viewer)

[Josh_LaF]

I wasn't sure where to post this so I thought I'd start here. Is there any way for the menus on a DVD to be shown in widescreen on a 4x3 TV? Does it depend on the DVD player, or the way the DVD is encoded?

 

[Gord Lacey]

Josh, I suspect it would depend on how the DVD player is set up. You can usually set the TV type in the setup menu, and the DVD will read that information and then display a widescreen image for certain discs that are coded that way. I have a 4x3 TV, but it does a vertical squeeze to make use of the anamorphic picture, so I have my DVD player setup as a widescreen 16x9 TV. It'll put widescreen material in widescreen, and 4x3 material in 4x3. It'll even switch between the aspect ratios if the content is 16x9 and the menus are 4x3. I think you'll just have to play with the TV setting on your DVD player and find out what works for you. The problem is that you may go to all the work of setting it up and then get menus that are just stretched to fill the 4x3 screen.

Gord

 

[Josh_LaF]

Thanks a lot Gord. My DVD player is set up on 4X3 Widescreen so I would assume that I can't see menus that way. The TV I'm planning on buying has a Widescreen mode where it will squeeze the picture, like yours, so I'll definitely make use of that function.