This one's for you, inventor of Widescreen telly person!

[Mr Flibble]

After what seemed like an age in getting home from work on Friday, our new JVC 28" WS telly is now up and running.

All I can say is, how did I live without it until now :eek: I'll never go to the pictures again ;). Sadly the first movie I watched in WS was 'jewel of the nile' on Sky :(, but hey - it looked amazing. Tried out Gladiator, Toy Story, Godzilla and Jurrasic Park - everything is fantastic :clap:

Just want to make sure I've got it set up properly though - I've set my DVD player to 16:9 mode (before it was 4:3 letterbox) and I've set my television to 'auto' mode to adjust the ratios depending on what signal is being sent to the telly.

on some films (Toy Story for example) there are no black lines on screen (god, that picture is amazing) but on Gladiator there still are (although much less than before, which is what I'd expect)

However, I put on a new Men Behaving badly DVD I got from HMV, and it still fills the screen - the OAR for these discs was 4:3, so shouldn't the picture have borders around it?

[Dave B]

My Sony stretches a 4:3 picture to fit the screen. I only see borders at the side if I go into 4:3 mode, I tend to leave mine in Wide mode all the time.

The first movie I was shocked by was Star Wars, the scene at the beginning when Vader captures Princess Leia, the amount of extra Storm Troopers in that scene is amazing.

Dave

[macmatt]

Yes you're right - 4:3 stuff should be pillarboxed (black bars left and right) on a widescreen set. Watching stretched 4:3 pictures should be against the law (it's nearly as bad as watching P&S versions of films!). Your TV's 'auto' mode is messing around with your ratios! It should have a setting that doesn't make any adjustment at all and simply changes the ratio when the source (ie DVD player) tells it to.

Try the different settings on the tv - for example set it to 4:3 and see if it still puts your widescreen DVDs in 16:9. On my TV (a Thomson) I leave it on Zoom 0 and it switches automatically when it detects a relevant signal! I think JVCs have a 'regular' setting - that could be the same thing.

[Mr Flibble]

I'll be honest, I haven't touched the settings too much - I expected the Auto mode to take care of everything for me. Watching things in full screen isn't too bad really - the picture doesn't look overly strecthed, and it's amazing watching things in 'proper' widescreen now.

Even watching football on the telly is better :) I'll have a few more experiements tomorrow though!

[Ridcully]

Re the difference between toy story and Gladiator. This is correct Toy Story is 1.85 aspect ratio so appears full screen. Gladiator is 2.35 and so appears with black bars on the top and bottom.

Agree with the others that if a 4:3 source is filling the screen, its setup wrong.

[Bapapapa]

I watch all my 4:3 telly broadcasts in SMART mode. Who cares whether Eastenders is stretched or not?

[wide_inside]

just the thought of Pat stretched any wider than she already is turns my stomache.

wide