Denon DVD-2200 Stretches 4:3 Content - Normal? (1 Viewer)

[Bob Lee]

I just upgraded to the DVD-2200 from a Panasonic RP91, and one thing I noticed was that the unit seems to always stretch 4:3 content to fill my 16:9 widescreen RPTV. Even if I change the aspect ratio of my TV from the 2200's setup screens it still seems to do this. Is this normal behavior, or am I missing something? My RP91 did not stretch 4:3 content from what I can recall.

 

[Allan Jayne]

When you change the aspect ratio on the TV to 4:3 what happens? If the raster stays 16:9 you got a lousy TV.

You would have to work around this, for example get a DVD player that adds black sidebars so the entire video signal represents a 16:9 picture but the subject matter displays as 4:3. Alternatively try the S-video connection.

(Does the DVD player output 540p or 1080i instead of 480p? Because U.S. HDTV is standardized as 16:9 one might expect that the TV may lock in 16:9 for 1080i and 720p but still I think there needs to be provision for a non-conforming 4;3 HDTV broadcast where the production did not add black side bars.)

Video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm

 

[Jack Briggs]

What kind of RPTV is it? Sounds like it locks into 16:9 mode whenever it's fed a prog-scan signal. Does the player have an aspect-ratio control to circumvent this? If not, you may have to send the RPTV an interlaced signal whenever you wish to view 4:3-based programming.

 

[Don_Berg]

Thats normal for most DVD players, the RP91 was unique in that it could scale and zoom to adjust for aspect ratio. Most other DVD players expect your HDTV to have zoom/stretch modes for 4:3 sources.

 

[Bob Lee]

Yeah, I kinda figured this was pretty normal and that the RP91 was a little bit better at dealing with non-anamorphic content. What's strange, though, is that even if I tell the 2200 that my TV is 4:3 it still stretches the pictures on my Mitsubishi WS-65411. Fortunately the set itself has various stretch/zoom modes which can correct this, but it would be preferable to have the player scale it directly instead of stretching it and then having my set compress it back down again.

 

[Don_Berg]

You are just "spoiled" by the great RP91!

 

[Ernie McCoy]

We must be missing something here. I have a DVD-2200 and a 16:9 TV. When I play a 4:3 DVD it shows up as 4:3 on the TV. When I play a wide screen DVD, 16:9 or higher, it gets presented in wide screen format on the TV. Doesn't matter whether the player is set to progressive or interlaced output. If I'm outputing 4:3 I can choose to stretch to widescreen mode if I wish.

Ernie

 

[Allan Jayne]

Your DVD player may encode the video output slightly so that a 16:9 enhanced (anamorphic) program can be identified as such by the TV. This permits the TV to automatically select the best aspect ratio, which a few sets do.

Only the anamorphic DVD's need the true 16:9 mode on the TV.

Still you ought to be able to override this autoselection using the aspect ratio controls on your TV remote, since once in awhile a DVD is incorrectly coded.

The 16:9 / 4:3 letterbox / 4:3 pan & scan settings on your DVD player do not change the picture width (16:9 TV). All the 4:3 settings do is reformat the picture to occupy fewer scan lines so it appears less tall, or widen the picture but losing portions of the sides keeping the visible width the same. The only way to shrink the width is via the aspect ratio control on teh TV, or to use the side squeeze mode or pillarbox mode (rare) on the DVD player.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Is the pillarbox function on DVD players really that rare? I've owned two progressive scan players since buying a 16x9 TV over three years ago, and both (Panasonic RP-91 and an older Toshiba 6200) offer this feature. The Toshiba only did pillarboxing for 4x3 material, though, and did not have the zoom/scaling feature for non-anamorphic widescreen material, ala the RP-91.

This seems like such an obvious feature to place on progessive scan players with the explosion in sales of 16x9 televisions.