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Trouble with Chaplin GOLD RUSH DVD...

#1
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6/27/09 at 10:31am
  • Joined: May 1999
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The disc is from the Warner Bros. Chaplin set released a few years ago, this title from which I just bought. I am trying to play the re-issue version that contains Chaplin's narration. Seems like a nice transfer, except...

I cannot get it to play in the 1.33:1 ratio. What I get is a stretched (and cropped) 1.78:1 image which of course is wrong to begin with, and which crops the image and compromises the detail.

I have tried re-setting everything on both my 46" monitor and my player and nothing will allow me to play this back in its intended ratio. Other 1.33:1 DVD's work fine.

Is this just me, or the DVD encoding, or what? I won't purchase other titles in this set until I find out what is going on here.

Thanks.
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#2
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6/27/09 at 1:44pm
  • Joined: June 2006
  • Location: Houston, TX USA
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Re: Trouble with Chaplin GOLD RUSH DVD...

I just tried mine, and it played @ 1.33:1 just fine. I tested it on a Toshiba HDA2.

Now, when I play 1.33:1 titles on my Pioneer upconverting DVD player, it defaults to a stretched image. I have to go into setup mode and select 16:9 compressed for a 1.33:1 title to display properly.

Onkyo TX-SR606
Toshiba HD-A2. HD-A3
Panasonic DMP-BD60
Mitsubishi WD-62725 62" DLP

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#3
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6/27/09 at 8:59pm
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Re: Trouble with Chaplin GOLD RUSH DVD...

Well, it's pretty obvious that there is some kind of encoding in the Chaplin series that my Sony S350 cannot handle. ALL other 1.33:1 movies play correctly. GOLD RUSH and now MODERN TIMES, which I rented just to see if the problem would recur, both fill my 46" screen, so even when not stretched, they are zoomed in on. I cannot adjust this either by player or by monitor settings. This really disappoints me. That means I have no way of viewing any of the great Chaplin classics as they should be seen with my current setup.
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#4
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6/27/09 at 9:12pm
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Re: Trouble with Chaplin GOLD RUSH DVD...

On a whim, I took my old S300 unit out of storage (it had started to freeze on all Blu-ray titles), and tried both Chaplins on it. Worked fine. So, while Sony made a number of great improvements from the 300 to the 350, somehow they left off or changed the newer player's ability to read and/or play all discs properly. I will be getting in touch with Sony about this. There is also a new firmware upgrade that might help.
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#5
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6/28/09 at 9:08am
  • Joined: June 2006
  • Location: Houston, TX USA
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Re: Trouble with Chaplin GOLD RUSH DVD...

A reviewer on amazon posted this about the Sony S550 player:

Quote:
I also tested 4x3 (1.33:1) DVDs and audio CDs, just to be sure the player could be my end-all, be-all player. Initially, the player stretched the 4x3 DVD to fit my 16x9 screen, but I eventually found the Screen Format video settings, which when set to the non-intuitive value of "Fixed Aspect Ratio", displays all DVDs in their proper aspect ratio.

Does the S350 have a similar setting?

You could also wade through the posts about the S350 over at the AVS Forum. I would register there and post it as a new question. I've gotten a lot of help there in my quest for a working Blu-ray player.

Onkyo TX-SR606
Toshiba HD-A2. HD-A3
Panasonic DMP-BD60
Mitsubishi WD-62725 62" DLP

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#6
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6/29/09 at 12:05am
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Re: Trouble with Chaplin GOLD RUSH DVD...

Quote:
Originally Posted by David_B_K
A reviewer on amazon posted this about the Sony S550 player:



Does the S350 have a similar setting?

You could also wade through the posts about the S350 over at the AVS Forum. I would register there and post it as a new question. I've gotten a lot of help there in my quest for a working Blu-ray player.

I'm also registered there, it's another good forum.
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#7
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6/29/09 at 6:06am
  • Joined: December 1998
  • Location: Michigan
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Re: Trouble with Chaplin GOLD RUSH DVD...

The Chaplin SD-DVD's are improperly flagged as "4x3 letterbox". Any player that reads that flag and automatically zooms the picture will have problems with these discs. Since most players simply ignore that type of flag, the discs play fine for most people.

My old Panasonic RP-91 could be set to automatically zoom/scale non-anamorphic widescreen titles that were flagged as "4x3 letterbox". Whenever I watched one of the Chaplin discs, I had to get in the player setup and force the player to not zoom the picture (I think the RP-91 setting was "shrink"), since it treated the disc as a non-anamorphic widescreen title in its "auto" setting..
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