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Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

#1
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10/15/08 at 4:06pm
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I understand to maintain the correct aspect ratio various non 16x9 videos cannot fill the screen. But, it should be able to fill the screen with either the length of the width. Why do I get videos that are in boxes in the middle of the screen with spaces on all sides? If it's too wide to fill the height it should fill the screen from left to right -- conversely, if it's too tall to fill the width it should fill the screen from top to bottom.

What's the deal?
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#2
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10/15/08 at 4:46pm
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

That sounds like a non-anamorphic disc. What's encoded on the disc is the movie you see, plus the black bars above and below the visible part. So it actually is filling your TV screen from top to bottom. It's just that some of the picture is black.

That or you have something setup wrong.
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#3
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10/15/08 at 5:41pm
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkHarrison
That sounds like a non-anamorphic disc. What's encoded on the disc is the movie you see, plus the black bars above and below the visible part. So it actually is filling your TV screen from top to bottom. It's just that some of the picture is black.

Actually, it's not a disk, it's cable TV.
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#4
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10/15/08 at 6:16pm
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

Quote:
Originally Posted by i_am_jim
Actually, it's not a disk, it's cable TV.
That sounds like a letterboxed image on a standard definition broadcast channel -- which, for this purpose, is the same as a nonanamorphic DVD.

Your set probably has picture settings that will expand the image so that it fills the entire width of the screen. Most HD sets do.

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#5
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10/15/08 at 6:26pm
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Reuben
Your set probably has picture settings that will expand the image so that it fills the entire width of the screen. Most HD sets do.

It has a feature called "Wide Fit" which I guess is what you are talking about. Somehow I was under the impression that the artificial resizing features distorted the image by changing the aspect ratio. Perhaps, there are special circumstances where it doesn't, and letterbox ratio on standard definition channels is one of these?

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#6
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10/15/08 at 7:01pm
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

No, you're right. Zooming and stretching and all that stuff does distort the image in most cases. But a 4:3 broadcast of a widescreen movie is only sending out a teensy, tiny little bit of a picture. Sometimes it's worth the distortion to make the thing big enough to see by zooming in. A widescreen image on a 4:3 standard definition frame just isn't broadcasting very many pixels so in "real size" it occupies just a small fraction of the center of your display.
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#7
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10/15/08 at 8:38pm
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

Quote:
Originally Posted by i_am_jim
It has a feature called "Wide Fit" which I guess is what you are talking about. Somehow I was under the impression that the artificial resizing features distorted the image by changing the aspect ratio.
It depends. Some of the "wide" modes do change the aspect ratio, but some just blow up the image to fill the width of the screen. The AR isn't changed, but the picture may still look "distorted" (as Brent notes) just because blowing up a lo-res image tends to expose its weaknesses.

Quote:
Originally Posted by i_am_jim
Samsung LN46A550
I have a Samsung DLP set, and one of the "Wide Fit" modes is just a simple blow-up. The manual should say which one.

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#8
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10/15/08 at 10:26pm
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

Though some of this is repeated elsewhere in the manual, this is about all it says about setting the screen size:

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/1786/94441290px5.jpg

If you look at the flower in Wide Fit it appears to be stretched.

And, the following explanation of "Just Scan" leaves me with no better understanding than I had before reading it.

Quote:
Just Scan: Use the function to see the full image without any cutoff when HDMI (720p/1080i/1080p), Component (1080i/1080p) or DTV (1080i) signals are input.
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#9
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10/16/08 at 1:13am
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

Usually (at least in my experience) 'just' mode sets the monitor to display 16:9 with the centermost portion of the screen close to proper width and height, with even image stretching going off to both sides of the screen. Instead of using 'full' mode to watch 4:3 material (where the entire screen is filled but everyone is short and fat), 'just' mode fills the entire screen and everything in the center of the screen looks kinda normal (some squishing does take place) while both sides of the picture are more short and fat.

Personally, for 4:3 satellite where critical viewing is a non-issue, I use the zoom mode on my Panny plasma and have adjusted the screen position in the set up menu so the entire screen is filled and the tops of heads are not cut off. This also has the distinct advantage of cutting off the station bugs from the bottom of the screen so image retention is no worry. Most 4:3 satellite broadcasts are of such poor quality anyway that zooming isn't really detremental to the pq. Now if I'm watching an academy ratio movie from DVD, well that's a different story...
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#10
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10/16/08 at 1:47am
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

Oops... Double post.
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#11
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10/16/08 at 4:53am
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

Quote:
Originally Posted by i_am_jim
Though some of this is repeated elsewhere in the manual, this is about all it says about setting the screen size:

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/1786/94441290px5.jpg

If you look at the flower in Wide Fit it appears to be stretched.

And, the following explanation of "Just Scan" leaves me with no better understanding than I had before reading it.

Jim,

Per the manual you linked to, try one of the Zoom modes (probably Zoom1) instead of Wide Fit. That appears to just zoom the image instead of also stretching. I use a zoom mode on the Vizio LCD TV in our bedroom when watching widescreen movies on TCM. The side black bars are eliminated without distorting the image.
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#12
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10/16/08 at 6:26am
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott Merryfield
Jim,

Per the manual you linked to, try one of the Zoom modes (probably Zoom1) instead of Wide Fit. That appears to just zoom the image instead of also stretching. I use a zoom mode on the Vizio LCD TV in our bedroom when watching widescreen movies on TCM. The side black bars are eliminated without distorting the image.

My Samsung has most of the same "zooms" referred to in the pictured manual. When I'm watching a letterboxed (windowboxed) movie on TCM, for example, I usually use "Zoom 1" and it looks ok.
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#13
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10/16/08 at 6:36am
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

On my Samsung, the "Just Scan" mode is a 1:1 pixel mapping mode that insures zero overscan for any transmission. (16:9 mode gives about 2% overscan).

There are other modes that stretch letterboxed or 4:3 images, but "Just Scan" on Samsung isn't designed for that at all.
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#14
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10/16/08 at 6:59am
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

If there's a broadcast (or non-anamorphic dvd) that shows a widescreen movie in 4:3 mode I just don't watch it. And I make sure to email the engineer of the station or the movie studio that I refuse to zoom in on the movie and make it look like crap just so it'll fill my screen. I suppose if they get enough feedback like this they'll stop broadcasting this way and update their dvd library to be anamorphic.
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#15
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10/16/08 at 7:21am
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott Merryfield
Per the manual you linked to, try one of the Zoom modes (probably Zoom1) instead of Wide Fit.
I agree: Zoom1 looks right.

That may be what the setting on my set is called; I was going by memory, and I don't really look at this point -- I just know where the setting is.

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#16
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10/16/08 at 8:09am
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

Quote:
Originally Posted by hodedofome
If there's a broadcast (or non-anamorphic dvd) that shows a widescreen movie in 4:3 mode I just don't watch it. And I make sure to email the engineer of the station or the movie studio that I refuse to zoom in on the movie and make it look like crap just so it'll fill my screen. I suppose if they get enough feedback like this they'll stop broadcasting this way and update their dvd library to be anamorphic.

If the channel you are watching is not HD, how would you propose the station fix this? For example, TCM does not have an HD channel, which is where I use the zoom mode on the TV. On our 37-inch Vizio LCD in the bedroom, the picture quality is acceptable. I have not tried this on our new 67-inch Samsung LED DLP in the main HT room, though.

AMC does have an HD channel, but they always crop or pan & scan 2.35:1 films to 1.78:1 (as do many other HD networks that show scope films), so I just do not watch in that case.
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#17
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10/16/08 at 9:44am
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

My PS3 does this with some DVD trailers, then when the movie starts it fills the screen. I am using a 16X9 Sharpvision DLP Projector at 720p. Can't quite figure it out yet.
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#18
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10/16/08 at 10:55am
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

Quote:
Originally Posted by tls36
My PS3 does this with some DVD trailers, then when the movie starts it fills the screen. I am using a 16X9 Sharpvision DLP Projector at 720p. Can't quite figure it out yet.
That is because those trailers are non anamorphic, whereas the actual movie is anamorphic.

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#19
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10/16/08 at 2:19pm
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

Thanks to everyone for all the replies.

As I understand the answer, the surrounding bands are part of the image sent to the TV, thus it thinks they're part of the actual picture and can't remove them.
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#20
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10/16/08 at 2:51pm
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

Quote:
Originally Posted by i_am_jim
Thanks to everyone for all the replies.

As I understand the answer, the surrounding bands are part of the image sent to the TV, thus it thinks they're part of the actual picture and can't remove them.

Sort of, but not really. The 4:3 image in the middle of the screen is the entire signal being sent to the TV with standard definition broadcast television (HD signals are 16:9). With SD, the TV is showing that image in the 4:3 shape and placing bars on the right and left of the image to fill the screen. So, if the 4:3 image is letterboxed (has bars on the top and bottom) the image will appear to have bars all the way around. If this bothers you, you can set the TV (or even the cable box in most cases) to zoom in on the viewable image area, so the bars are not visible. Or, get an HD signal.

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#21
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10/16/08 at 3:07pm
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

Thanks. You're right, I worded my statement poorly.
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#22
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10/17/08 at 12:25pm
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Re: Why Doesn't Either the Length or the Width Fill the Screen?

Quote:
Originally Posted by i_am_jim
As I understand the answer, the surrounding bands are part of the image sent to the TV, thus it thinks they're part of the actual picture and can't remove them.
Not exactly...it actually depends on what channel you're watching.

If you are watching an SD channel and are experiencing Black bars on all 4 sides, then what is occurring is; The TV is generating the Black bars on the right and left side and the black bars that are directly over and under the video image are part of the video signal. What this means is; the black bars on the left and right are not being transmitted to your TV.

But if you are watching an HD channel and are experiencing Black bars on all 4 sides, then what is occurring is; all 4 black bars are being transmitted by the TV video signal where the top and bottom bars are part of the original video and the bars on the left and right sides are being generated (as video) by the TV station.
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