Sony Wega - Overscanning question (1 Viewer)

[Sam H]

Hello,

I recently purchased a 32" Sony Wega ("Vega"), model number KV32-FS100, which is analog. When watching DVDs I set my player to 16:9 mode and use the component video out into the tv.

I've noticed on 1.85:1 DVDs there is *no letterboxing*, and appears as a full screen image.

Is this normal? And am I losing any information?

Thanks,
-S

 

[Ryan FB]

This isn't an overscan problem. You need to set your DVD player to 4:3 Letterbox instead of 16:9, or set the 16:9 enhanced/V-compression mode (not sure which Sony is calling it) on your TV. All DVD's only have a 4:3 imagespace to work with. An anamorphic widescreen DVD stretches the widescreen image vertically to fill the 4:3 frame and increase the amount of resolution, instead of wasting x number of horizontal lines for storing black pixels (i.e. the letterboxing bars). The 16:9 DVD player setting is for widescreen displays or displays that can "squeeze" this anamorphic picture to take advantage of the increased resolution. The 4:3 Letterbox DVD player setting goes ahead and discards some lines of the image and adds in the black bars before sending the image to your TV. I believe your Wega can do the squeezing, check your manual or just do what I do and twiddle about until you find it. Using the squeeze mode on your TV while your DVD player is 16:9 will give you the proper letterboxing bars (and an undistorted image), as well as getting the maximum resolution. Note that for non-anamorphic DVD's (old/bad widescreen transfers that didn't use the anamorphic technique, TV shows, or older movies with an OAR of 4:3) you'll need to take your TV out of "16:9 enhanced", and switch the DVD player to 4:3.

 

[Sam H]

That was a very helpful reply, Ryan.

Thank you