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4:3 Letterbox vs. 4:3 Pan-and-Scan on Sony player (1 Viewer)

Paul McElligott

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My Sony DVD has these two settings for video output: 4x3 letterbox and 4:3 P&S.

Can anyone explain the difference?
 

Rich Malloy

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I believe the answer lies in the all-but-forgotten "pan and scan on the fly" feature where DVDs were flagged to crop the sides and fill the screen when the 4x3 P&S option was selected.

So far as I'm aware, the only disc so encoded was the original pressing of Criterion's "The Last Temptation of Christ"... and that was entirely accidental and subsequently "corrected". It was noticed only because so many people had their players set to 4x3 P&S, either by accident or default, but had never seen a film presented as such since there were few to none so flagged.

I think that's the deal!

(To sum up, set to letterbox just in case.)
 

Paul McElligott

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Thanks. That makes sense, I think. I had it set to 4x3 P&S, just because that was the way it was set out of the box.
 

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