What does "4:3 pan & scan" setting do on DVD player? (1 Viewer)

[JimmyK]

My father recently purchased a DVD player and ask me to hook it up. He has a recently purchased 4:3 regular interlaced TV and plans to keep it as long as it works.

I hooked up the DVD player and set the display to "4:3 letterbox". I then put in a widescreen DVD for a quick demo.

Right away my father asked if I could get rid of the black bars. I've discussed the virtues of OAR with him many times before without success. So I went back in and changed the setting to "4:3 pan & scan".

I put the same title back in and it still played in OAR. I expected that the player would fill the screen and hack off the sides of the picture. There was note in the DVD player manual that said some DVDs would default to letterbox regardless of the chosen setting. So I tried several different titles, both anamorphic and non-anamorphic. All played in OAR.

So my question is, what does the "4:3 pan & scan" setting do? Does a DVD have to be encoded with something special to be able to use this DVD player setting? Are there titles that will let the player do the hacking?

Thanks for the help.

JimmyK

 

[Kevin. W]

Set the player to 16:9 to fill the screen. Pan & scan movies have the 1.33:1(4:3) ratio to fill the screen of a regular tv. Buy your father Fullscreen versions of movies if he doesn't want the bars.

Kevin

 

[Jeremy Little]

Does a DVD have to be encoded with something special to be able to use this DVD player setting? Are there titles that will let the player do the hacking?

Yes, and Yes. The only one I have that does it is The Last Temptation of Christ CC. The Pan and Scan on the fly sucks big time I'm sure glad I am an OAR guy.

 

[Ken Seeber]

Set the player to 16:9 to fill the screen.

Which, of course, will vertically stretch the picture out of proportion by one-third. How black bars can bother people, but watching a movie that looks like it's reflected in a funhouse mirror is beyond me.

Oh, and it won't fill the screen on movies made in aspect ratios wider than 1.85:1.

The better course of action would be to buy a player that has a zoom mode.

 

[Reginald Trent]

Just to add to the confusion. Setting the player to 16:9 will stretch anamorphic DVDs only. Some are designated as being enhanced for Widescreen TVs, BLADE for example. Others like Saving Private Ryan, simply state Anamorphic Widescreen. Non anamorphic DVDs cannot be altered unless you use the zoom mode on your player or TV.

 

[Craig_Kg]

Why aren't all widescreen sourced DVDs anamorphic and pan & scan encoded? Then all the full frame fans (morons) can set their players to 4:3 p&s while the rest of us can use 4:3 letternbox or 16:9 to enjoy movies in their proper aspect.

 

[JimmyK]

Yes, and Yes. The only one I have that does it is The Last Temptation of Christ CC. The Pan and Scan on the fly sucks big time I'm sure glad I am an OAR guy.

Thanks, that's what I suspected.

I appreciate all the responses!

JimmyK

 

[Martin Fontaine]

Since the Pan & Scan on the fly requires special codes on the disk to know where the viewing window is. What they could do is if those codes are not present, to just show the center like players with a Zoom function.

The same could be said about AC3's Dynamic Range Controls, that too requires special codes in the audio stream, if they are not present to use an automatic mode or something.

While we're at it, why not an option to decide "When" the subtitles are "Pasted" on the image. Player Generated subtitles are always at the same place on the screen whether you set it in 16x9, 4x3 LBX or 4x3 P&S. So for example a 1.85 movie will have subtitles partially in the black bar in 4x3 LBX while they will appear correctly in 16x9 mode. If it could "Paste" the subtitles on the image BEFORE it does the downonversion then they would be vertically squashed with the rest of the picture and this way, I can still velcro my Black Cardboard strips on my TV.

I did manage to convince him to let me come back next visit and change the factory settings on his TV to more appropriate settings. I explained that this would make the bars truely black instead of dark grey, perhaps making them less noticable, and extending the life of the tube.

Or using Velcro and some pieces of Black Cardboard. The whole thing costs less than $5 to make (Although positionning the velcro and cutting the cardboard to the appropriate size can take some time) my 27" 4:3 TV can easily appear like if it was a 24" 16x9 or a 22" 2.35:1 TV!

 

[Allan Jayne]

If you use the 4:3 Pan and Scan setting on the player and the disk is 16:9 enhanced but not coded for pan and scan --- the results are unpredictable. Usually you get the same thing as 4:3 Letterbox.
For 4:3 DVD's, full frame DVD's and letterboxed non-enhanced (non-anamorphic) DVD's all three DVD player aspect ratio modes should do the same thing, pass the video to the TV unaltered.
Zoom on the DVD player to make non-enhanced letterbox programs fit better on 16:9 screens is up and coming but very few players have it today. (For those of you doing progressive scan but with one external unit for all video sources, the iScan Ultra doubler has this zoom.) Done right, the quality of player zoom can be much better than TV zoom. Usually the TV zoom spaces out the middle 360 scan lines (optical zoom) while player zoom would spread out the picture evenly on all 480 scan lines. This makes the picture smoother looking but cannot increase the resolution to that of an anamorphic DVD of the same program.
Video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm