DVD playback on widescreen, and still black bars??

[SAF]

I recently purchased a 42" Panasonic progressive wide screen plasma monitor. I am confused why I still see black bars displayed on the screen when I watch DVD movies. I have set my DVD player to output the video in 16:9. I have also set my monitor for the same ratio. The DVD's I have purchased all indicate that they are intended for viewing in widescreen format, but only about 1/2 of the monitor's horizontal length is dedicated to the image. The remaining area is used for the black bars. I can deal with some black bars, but these things are very large and it defeats the purpose of purchasing a widescreen monitor when nearly half of the viewing area is completely wasted.



As you can see, the bars are very large and almost occupy 1/2 the area of the screen. Is there anything I can do to increase the viewable area? I have a bad feeling that this is normal.

Thanks,

Raffi

[setarip]

Is the DVD possibly "locked" at 2.11:1 anamorphic display?

[SAF]

I dont think so because the only options for aspect ratio that I can set on the DVD are the following:

4:3 Letter Box
4:3 Pan Scan
16:9

And it's currently set to 16:9

My plasma monitor supports images zooming, which reduces the size of the black bars by zooming the image to appear larger, but of course the image quality suffers when the image is zoomed.

What do you think?

SAF

[setarip]

"Is the DVD possibly "locked" at 2.11:1 anamorphic display?"

I'm referring to the DVD (disk) NOT the DVD player...

[gd_nimrod]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but i read somewhere on www.vcdhelp.com that 16:9 is widescreen format...
Does the image stay the same when you put it to 4:3?

[SAF]

Originally posted by setarip
"Is the DVD possibly "locked" at 2.11:1 anamorphic display?"

I'm referring to the DVD (disk) NOT the DVD player...

I dont know. It doesn't say anything on the actual DVD cover about that.

SAF

[setarip]

The format should be indicated somewhere either on the face of the DVD (sometimes around the hub ring) or the DVD booklet/information sheet...

Is this happening with one, some, or all DVDs?

How does the video appear if you set it for 4:3 letterbox format?

[Bchball]

I have noticed this also with my widescreen projector, i believe this is to preserve the aspect ratio of the movie the way it was shown/filmed for the cinema. Your tv will work perfectly (no black bars) for dvd's encoded in 16:9 aspect ratio.

[SAF]

Originally posted by Bchball
I have noticed this also with my widescreen projector, i believe this is to preserve the aspect ratio of the movie the way it was shown/filmed for the cinema. Your tv will work perfectly (no black bars) for dvd's encoded in 16:9 aspect ratio.

Yeah, but I dont recall ever seeing a DVD encoded in 16:9! Have you?

SAF

[setarip]

"Yeah, but I dont recall ever seeing a DVD encoded in 16:9! Have you?"

Hundreds, if not thousands...

[Bchball]

yes, i have a couple of movies that are in 16:9 which utilize the whole screen. They are usually the older ones that are re-encoded from vhs to dvd. The bottom line is you get a way bigger picture with the widescreen tv than you would from a regular 4:3 tv.

[Bchball]

have you been able to figure out whether you can use more of your screen real estate? Q: Is that picture in proportion, there is a oval ornament on the desk in the picture, is it meant to be circular or oval. Because your tv is widescreen you should set your dvd player to widescreen not letterbox. Letterbox setting is for normal 4:3 tv's.

[SAF]

Originally posted by Bchball
have you been able to figure out whether you can use more of your screen real estate? Q: Is that picture in proportion, there is a oval ornament on the desk in the picture, is it meant to be circular or oval. Because your tv is widescreen you should set your dvd player to widescreen not letterbox. Letterbox setting is for normal 4:3 tv's.

My DVD is definitely not set to letterbox, I made sure of that. My monitor has a zoom feature, which stretches the image to utilize more area of the screen, but the downside to this feature is loss of resolution and clarity of the image, which is what I expected.

SAF

[digitalsick]

Just because its a widescreen TV doesnt mean you won't have black bars .Cheap widescreen TV's don't even handle 1.85 aspect ratio . Yours will but if you watch a movie that is made in 2.35 aspect ratio you'll still get bars ,the only option is to zoom in ,loosing abit on the sides but still very acceptable.Do you have that problem with all wide screen movies or just some?