Convert DVD Videos NOT enhanced for Wide Screen TV's

[sammidog]

converting widescreen DVD to watch on older TV

I have been following this thread but not sure I understand whether my problem is similar. I have played some DVDs of very old movies on my old, square TV. I don't mind widescreen (like you see on TV) but these DVDs are so widescreen that there is almost as much black space top and bottom as there is film! Can someone advise a (simple) programme that could change that? Thanks.

[Chizzmo]

The "simplest" way to get rid of most of the bars would be to press zoom once on your remote. But if you really want to get into it, it can be accomplished by following Blu's advise in the #2 post of this thread. Just be sure your not over-writting your original file and you will have to play around a bit till you know exactly what is going on.

[katzdvd]

The "simplest" way to get rid of most of the bars would be to press zoom once on your remote.

When I press "zoom" on my Sony, the magnifying glass & 1x, 2x or whatever stays on the screen untill I "unzoom". Very annoying, doesn't seem normal.

[Chewy]

I refuse to buy a new dvd player that has an inferior zoom feature, my toshiba's have like a 25 and 50% zoom that removes 1/3 and 2/3's of the black bars, it has to be reset every time you stop the dvd, minor annoyance.

This feature seems to be the exception with players tho.

[jblitz277]

very useful stuff my kids tv was the same way (black bars top&bottom only middle third was the movie) I simply went into dvd menu and changed ratio and this is a cheap player.

[jerry4dos]

Thank you, Joe, for being so persistent. You did a good job of explaining your problem, when it seemed nobody was really grasping what you needed.

I got some "Emmy Consideration" disks of films that were shot in Panavision, the producers didn't want to take a chance that the voters would all have 16:9 TVs, so they put the full Panavision frame on the screen with black bars at the top and bottom, and coded the DVD 4:3. When I played it on my 16:9 TV, I had black borders on all four sides, if you kept the aspect ratio where everybody didn't look "short and fat" or "tall and skinny."

DVD-Rebuilder fixed up the disks so the Panavision frame filled the 16:9 screen with just a skinny little bar at the top and bottom (Panavision is a little wider than 16:9). No "pan and scan" was necessary, and there was no unseen video information, and my screen was (essentially) filled.

Thanks

Jerry