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Help: Blu-ray player windowboxes fullscreen discs! (1 Viewer)

Bill Santagata

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I just bought a Blu-ray player (Sony BDP-S185) although I do not yet have an HD TV (I'm sure I"ll be getting one soon and in the meantime want to be able to stop buying DVDs).
It's hooked up to a standard ratio television and when I play a movie originally shot in Academy ratio, the image does not fill the screen as it should but has black bars on the top and bottom to create a widescreen TV ratio, then black bars on the left and right to create the Academy ratio.
By fiddling with the settings I can only get rid of the bars on the top and bottom but the image is stretched vertically.
How can I get the disc to play normally?
Thanks for your help.
 

Martino

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Looked up the manual for your player here:
http://www.docs.sony.com/release/BDPS185_BX18.pdf
It's hooked up to a standard ratio television and when I play a movie originally shot in Academy ratio, the image does not fill the screen as it should but has black bars on the top and bottom to create a widescreen TV ratio, then black bars on the left and right to create the Academy ratio.
By fiddling with the settings I can only get rid of the bars on the top and bottom but the image is stretched vertically.
On Page 15...there is all of the video settings - need to mess with these settings...
TV Type: 16:9 or 4:3 -- if you do not have an HDTV yet - set to 4:3
16:9: Select this when connecting to a widescreen TV or a TV with a wide mode
function
[4:3]: Select this when connecting to a 4:3
screen TV without a wide mode function.
Screen Format: Original or Fixed Aspect Ratio
Original: Select this when connecting to a TV with a wide mode function. Displays a 4:3 screen picture in 16:9 aspect ratio even on a wide-screen TV.
Fixed Aspect Ratio:
Changes the picture size to fit the screen size with the original picture aspect ratio.
It sounds like you might have the TV Type set to 16:9 instead of 4:3....just a guess not knowing your setting -
What are your settings for?:
TV Type:
Screen Format:
DVD Aspect Ratio:
Cinema Conversion Mode:
What cables are you using to connect your player to your TV?
Hopefully, when we have all of this information, something will be obvious and a simple setting change will fix your issue.
 

Bill Santagata

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I've already consulted the menu and tried just about every combination of settings. Currently they are at:
TV Type: 4:3
Screen Format: Fixed Aspect Ratio
DVD Aspect Ratio: Letter Box
Cinema Conversion Mode: Auto
Based on the description of these settings in the manual, the way I have it should be displaying the proper aspect ratio for any film (widescreen or Academy) on a standard television.
 

Al.Anderson

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I'm pretty sure you want to turn Letter Box off. That's only for when the DVD is letter boxed.
 

Brian McHale

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Al.Anderson said:
I'm pretty sure you want to turn Letter Box off. That's only for when the DVD is letter boxed.
I don't think that's true. These players don't make you change settings in the setup menu depending on the disc. The other selection is Pan & Scan; I believe the DVD spec allows for widescreen discs to be automatically pan 'n' scanned if the user selects.
In all fairness ,the manual doesn't describe this very well, but if the two choices are "letterbox" and "p&s", I'm pretty sure you want to select letterbox.
 

Brian McHale

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Bill, have you tried multiple discs? Sometimes, DVDs are improperly flagged and there can be issues displaying them depending on the TV. If you haven't tried multiple discs, it might be worth just to see if all 4:3 discs play this way.
 

Martino

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Looked at the manual again - I think you want to change the DVD Aspect Ratio from Pan & Scan to Letter Box.
If the movie does need black bars on top/bottom of the screen to fit in the whole picture - you do not want to have your setting zoomed in to fill the 4:3 screen - throwing away the information on the edges of the screen.
Here is how the manual
0e206cc6_LetterBoxExplanation.x-ms-bmp

I circled the information that will be lost in your picture - if you are watching a wide screen movie on a 4:3 set...
I also tried looking for 4:3 material on a 4:3 set...manual is not much help there. But if the disk is flagged incorrectly, it could be trying to zoom in when it should not be...
Also note - most folks in here will have a 16:9 set...we are just trying to help, but it may be a firmware issue. Have you tried to contact Sony with your questions?
 

Bill Santagata

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I have tried multiple Academy ratio discs and they all have the same problem. I've also tried two different televisions. Both hookups were with composite video cables. The only change in setting that affects the image is changing the shape of the TV from 4:3 to 16:9. This gets rid of the black bars on the top and bottom but still keeps the black bars on the left and right and the image is stretched vertically.
Widescreen discs play perfectly normally with the black bars on the top and bottom being the appropriate thickness for a 4:3 television set. I'm aware of what gets lost in the pan-and-scan process and I always watch movies in the correct aspect ratio. The problem is that when the movie's original aspect ratio *is* full-screen (aka Academy ratio) the player redundantly windowboxes the film.
Also, Academy ratio DVDs play perfectly normally as well, with the image filling the screen. The problem is only with Academy ratio Blu-rays.
 

David Norman

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I think the problem is Bluray are natively encoded 16:9 so without a zoom capability on your TV it's only capable of sending information to the middle of your 4:3 set. There just isn't any information on the Bluray disc to send to the Top/Bottom of the screen so those bars are just the TV not receiving information while the L/R bars are generated from the Player.
Since the DVDs are presented properly I think your machine is setup as well as it can be.
 

Keith Paynter

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Unlike DVD's, Blu-Ray discs are not anamorphically encoded, they are 1:1 in pixel ratio. Most likely, 1920x1080 titles will appear letterboxed and windowboxed on a 4x3 display, and 1440x1080 titles should appear full screen, although this is not always the case: Image's "Phantom Of The Opera" (Blackhawk/FPE) is 1920x1080, and therefore all the color tinting extends outside the film's intended viewing area to the sides - something that was never resolved when the disc was re-authored.
 

Michael Rogers

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Are these academy ratio discs blu rays or DVD? Becuase if they are blu rays side bars are part of the signal and then it is letterboxed for your 4:3 display.
There should be some sort of zoom feature to take care of that. On my Panasonic player it's called something like "side cut" because it cuts off the sides. It doesn't explicly say so but I think it is there to compensate for 4:3 blu ray material if you are watching on a 4:3 TV.
There should be something similar on your player. Some sort of zoom setting.
 

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