I have a Sampo that has a built in converter and is region free. I have my tv type set as Letterbox (Not 16x9) When I watch my widescreen region 2 Pals (Robbie Williams -At the Albert, and Disney's the Rescuers), they are almost full frame. the picture also looks stretched which I would normally associate with having the player set to 16x9 as my TV type. Anyone know?
If they're anamorphic, and it's anything like the APEX, it doesn't do both anamorphic AND PAL conversion at the same time. Either that or it's just not converting them properly and vertically squishing the signal
Sampo, Apex, and Daewoo don't do anamorphic downconversion and PAL conversion at the same time. Its one or the other and usually, the DVD player chooses to convert the PAL to NTSC. So you get anamorphic PAL distortion. There is also the possible problem of some PAL signals looking too squished, which Jeff mentioned, since the player removed too many lines for NTSC conversion. This usually occurs for letterbox, academy, or standard television formats.
