Stuck in zoom mode for 4x3 material? (1 Viewer)

[Greg_S_H]

Not having a 16x9 set myself, I was playing around with my dad's television with the goal of seeing what a full frame disc looked like in zoom mode. As it turns out, full frame material is zoomed already. I tried Shane, Lonesome Dove, the full frame disc from Finding Nemo, and a John Wayne picture from the '40s. All of them roughly filled the entire 16x9 picture, and I couldn't find a way to get them to a 4x3 shape. I flipped through the format choices, but only 16x9 and Panorama were available. This latter brought the image back to 4x3, but the corners were slanted out.

Now, when this TV was first hooked up, it was incorrectly set up for interlacing both on the set and the DVD player. In that mode, I distinctly remember having more format choices in DVD mode, including zoom. As I said, only 16x9 and Panorama are available now that it's in progressive. I went into the DVD's menu and switched to 4x3 letterbox, but it had no effect. I see nothing in the TV's menus that makes sense. There was a letterbox detect, but it had no effect either (nor did I expect it to, but I was trying everything). I didn't try setting it back to interlacing, as that wouldn't be an acceptable solution anyway.

As far as I know, he only has a handful of full frame discs (all of them OAR, with the exception of full frame discs included with widescreen editions as with Nemo), but he would want to watch those OAR. He watches regular TV in 4x3 with no problems. There's got to be a way to watch DVDs in 4x3 where appropriate, doesn't there?

The TV is a Loewe Anaconda and the DVD player is a Pioneer Elite. I don't know the model number of the player.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

I'm not familiar with that particular set, but it may be one of those models that restricts aspect ratio choices based on the incoming scanrate.

Many early 16/9 sets would lock into Full mode when fed 480p, most newer ones don't but will still lock into Full when fed an HD scanrate (1080i or 720p)

Try switching the output on the player from progressive to interlaced.

 

[Greg_S_H]

I'll try it when I can get back over there. I suspect you're right, since I recall 4x3 material being correct when it was in interlace mode early on. Like I said, he doesn't have many 4x3 discs, so it shouldn't be too big of an issue. And, he's not quite the purist I am, so I'm sure he'll just live with it. In fact, if he didn't know something like Shane was supposed to be 4x3, he'd probably never know.

Thanks for the response.