aspect ratio problem

Hi there, I have bought a panasonic sc-bt205 cinema system, blu ray dvd look fantastic on it but the problem i have is when i play a standard dvd on it the aspect ratio is 4:3 ie: black boxes top,bottom, right and left side, it never done it with my old lg cinema system non blu ray btw, my tv is set to 16:9 and dvd player is set to 16:9 but still standard dvd's show up as 4:3 even though they say widescreen and as i said never had problem with any dvd player i have ever owned until now can anyone enlighten me about this? it is all connected with HDMI btw

cheers guys

I am not familiar with that player but assuming it has the ability to format upsclaed 4:3 DVD's to the correct aspect ratio, there should be a menu selection to indicate that is what you want. I can't guess as to what the menu selection is called but it will be there if the player can do what you want. If the player can't force 4:3 on a 16x9 display at upscaled resolutions, you can use 480p and that will work for 4:3. Some displays have the ability to force 4:3 at upscaled resolutions when the player won't do it but again the display probably has a menu option or aspect ratio button on the remote to accomplish that.

Someone owning the player might be able to tell you if the player can force 4:3 and if so how to select that on the options menu if you can't find it. If no other DVD player you have owned is an upscaling DVD player, that is the reason you haven't seen this issue before. An HD display expects HD resolutions to be formatted for 16x9. If you have a Blu-ray disc with 4:3 programming, you will see that it is formatted properly when you play it.

Chris

Thx for replying,
my old dvd player upscaled standard to 1080i and it showed every dvd in widescreen, however this 1 upscales to 1080p but i see no options to change the upscale mode anywhere, it automatically does it i assume, it is very frustrating as i have tons of dvd's as i have just got into the bd market, so i need to be able to play my old disks, hopefully someone as you said with this player would reply and let me know if i am missing something, thanks anyway

cheers

Some SD DVDs did not properly encode them for wide screen and are not Anamorphic Widescreen so they show up with either black bars on all 4 sides or with bars on the sides depending on how they did it. A couple of such movies I have on SD DVD that do this are; The Abyss and Armageddon. What titles does it do it on and does it do it on ALL SD DVDs that are labeled as wide screen?

If it is doing it on all widescreen DVDs, then you need to either change the settings in the BD player to 16:9 format likely under the display section of the BD player menu. If that is already set on the BD player as 16:9, then you likely have to change the screen format on the display for THAT INPUT as your display may have memory settings for the screen format (i.e. Wide, Full, 4:3, Zoom, and/or JUST) for each input.

Hope this helps & welcome to the forum! :hithere:

Some SD DVDs did not properly encode them for wide screen and are not Anamorphic Widescreen so they show up with either black bars on all 4 sides or with bars on the sides depending on how they did it. A couple of such movies I have on SD DVD that do this are; The Abyss and Armageddon. What titles does it do it on and does it do it on ALL SD DVDs that are labeled as wide screen?

If it is doing it on all widescreen DVDs, then you need to either change the settings in the BD player to 16:9 format likely under the display section of the BD player menu. If that is already set on the BD player as 16:9, then you likely have to change the screen format on the display for THAT INPUT as your display may have memory settings for the screen format (i.e. Wide, Full, 4:3, Zoom, and/or JUST) for each input.

Hope this helps & welcome to the forum! :hithere:

He is talking about DVD's formatted for 4:3 whether the actual programming is 4:3 or it is a widescreen movie formatted inside a 4:3 frame, it is stretched when upscaling. Anamorphic (formatted for widescreen) DVD's are fine. Many players do this, the Toshiba XD-E500 for one, the LG BH200 for two, the Samung BD-UP5000 for three and I could name others but I don't know whether this specific player allows for proper aspect ratio with upscaled 4:3 DVD or not.

Chris

i tried a few dvd's and scream trilogy did the 4:3 thing, i-robot however was fine at the main movie but trailers and warnings and stuff at start was in 4:3 format, i just thought that the player would stretch it automatically but i guess in this case it does not

thx anyway guys i will just have to live with it i guess

pops