- Joined: December 1969
- Post Count: 7,219
Re: Black Bands and Black Bars
Phil:
Have you "told" the Blu Ray player that it is attached to a 4:3 TV?
Regards,
Joe
- Joined: August 2001
- Location: New York City Area
- Post Count: 3,537
Re: Black Bands and Black Bars
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Brian McHale
I guess I would have thought that 4:3 BDs might have a "4:3 flag" so that a BD player connected to a 4:3 TV would automatically zoom the picture. Maybe they figured everybody's going to widescreen TVs and didn't bother.
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I suspect the problem is at the TV end, not the player end -- well, it's a combo problem, but (at least) the TV needs to be the one to have the proper setting.
Sounds like the problem is the 4x3 HDTV locks out aspect ratio conversion functions as soon as it sees an HD signal. This was quite common on some 16x9 HDTVs, especially some older Panny and Samsung RPTVs, IIRC. They tended to lock out AR conversion features as soon as they saw any HD signals (and in many cases, even 480p signals). In this instance, it's a 4x3 HDTV (probably made during the same era of relatively short-sighted HDTV design) that's doing the locking.
Anyway, Phil, it sounds like you may have to force your BD player to downrez and output 480p or maybe even 480i in order for your 4x3 HDTV to display the ST:TOS BDs in their native 4x3 OAR w/out the excess black bars.
_Man_
Just another amateur learning to paint w/ "the light of the world".
- Joined: August 2001
- Location: New York City Area
- Post Count: 3,537
Re: Black Bands and Black Bars
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Stephen Tu
No, that's not the problem. His TV basically only has 2 aspect modes, std 4:3, and "16:9 enhanced", what was called a "squeeze mode" or "vertical compression". You can use service mode to turn it off, or you can force 480i/p out of the player, but the problem in this case is that although that would get rid of the bars on the top & bottom, it would *not* get rid of the bars on the sides, which are embedded within the Blu-ray 16:9 frame. Plus the picture would then be too tall & skinny, objects distorted.
The problem here is that in order to get the desired effect (fullscreen 4:3, undistorted), he needs the BD player to crop the sides of the 16:9 frame to output a 4:3 frame, instead of letterboxing to 4:3 or outputting 16:9. The Sony can't do that AFAIK. It can be done in principle (I've had HD cable boxes that offer choice between cropping vs. letterboxing), but I don't know of BD players that can do this for certain on BDs, especially via component. I think the new Oppo does, but only for HDMI.
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Actually, even if the player can remove the side bars, his TV will probably still lock its AR control if it sees something other than 480i (or maybe 480p). Either way, his TV probably is at least part of the problem.
And if the TV's AR zoom function was not locked out, it *might* have the desired 1.33x zoom to deal w/ the image w/out needing the BD player to do anything.
Anyway, like RickER pointed out, time to upgrade the TV to a 16x9 set.
_Man_
Just another amateur learning to paint w/ "the light of the world".
