Getting an HDTV!

[atifsh]

yes u can, but u may endup cropping image if u zoom too much.

[admin]

I think there's usually quite a few zoom/resize modes, including cropping, non-linear stretching (eg. wider at the sides, normal in the middle) and combinations of these. I basically switch between Full (no zoom/stretch) and 4:3 (grey/black borders on left/right).

But check if this kind of AR adjustment is available on all inputs, as some TVs do not allow digital inputs (eg. HDMI, VGA) to be adjusted this way.

[drfsupercenter]

Hmm, well if I get a DVD player with HDMI upscaling, will it have a zoom feature?

The two I'd use 99% of the time are "widescreen" (which is what you were saying by Full), and "pillarbox" which is for 4:3 inputs. But for those older DVDs, I don't want to be stuck double-boxing like my portable DVD player (Sony failed to include a zoom, only stretch or pillarbox)

admin, you have a Wii, right? What happens if you play GameCube games with it? Do they get stretched out, or did Nintendo finally do something right and have them pillarboxed? I know the Classic Console games are stretched because I tested it at a friend's house.

[admin]

It all depends on the DVD player and whether it can activate zoom in HDMI mode or not (most should, I think).

I have a Wii, but I don't have any Gamecube games. But it should be just an easy switch on the TV's AR mode to fix the stretch issue for me.

[atifsh]

zoom modes are there in lcd/plasma's u actually dont need in dvd player, unless some odd reason u need both to fullfill ur need , this philips my brother have does zoom in and out 3 different levels.

[drfsupercenter]

well I'd just need enough to remove the bars if I'm playing a 16:9 non-anamorphic movie. None of that 3x zoom stuff...

[MilesAhead]

I have OPPO upscaling DVD player I got a few years ago.

http://www.oppodigital.com/opdv971h.html

There's newer versions of it out now with HDMI output instead of DVI... but it does have a nice 1.2 zoom and what it calls a "wide squeeze" mode. If you have clean 4:3 video and show it in Wide Squeeze, then zoom it 1.2 it looks close to a 16:9 experience. Only
thing that bugs me about it is that it doesn't have like a 3/4 zoom or 90% zoom so you
can get to read subtitles that want to drop off the screen. The largest less than 1.0 zoom it has is 1/2 zoom which makes the subs readable but you don't want to watch the movie anymore.

I haven't seen output from the newer cheaper DVD players so I couldn't tell you if
OPPO is overpriced these days or not. What I can say is that a lot of .avi files
upconverted to 1080i look good. I watch a lot of subtitled stuff so that's usually where
I run into hassles. Although many times if you use a program to create .divx output
with the selectable subtitle they position on the screen better than just using the .srt file copied to the DVD. Trial and error seems to be the rule though

[drfsupercenter]

Hmm, I forgot about the subtitles!

Why can't they automatically move the subtitles when they zoom in? I know if you use closed captioning they stay in the same place... I don't get why subtitles get zoomed.

I'll stop at Best Buy sooner or later and see what kinds they sell.

[MilesAhead]

There's a couple of different issues. If the video has hard subs then zooming in will effect them just like the rest of the video. If you have subs that are falling out of view at non-zoomed resolution, then a zoom out can make them readable, but shrinks the picture.

Unfortunately on my player they didn't think to put a negative zoom closer to 1.0 say, a .9 zoom so you could get subtitles onto the screen and still be able to see the video at near intended resolution.

With divx/xvid video how the subtitles will act on the player is a hit and miss thing. Sometimes with a 4:3 video the subs will have the bottom half chopped off unless you convert with overscan. It's good if your player will play erasable discs. Then you can test burn a few segments and see how things will play before committing a DVD blank.

If you find an inexpensive upconverting player you're very happy with please post the details. Eventually those small HDTVs will be cheap enough to put one in every room so I'd probably want to get a decent cheap upscaling player to go with it.