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where did the black bars go on my widescreen dvd’s using a blu-ray player?

I just bought a blu-ray player. I have a 16:9 widescreen tv. Unlike most people, I enjoyed the black bars on the top and bottom of the screen because you are able to watch the movie how it was intended to be seen. Well, now that I have a blu-ray player, when I watch widescreen dvd’s (not blu-ray discs, but DVD’s) I dont see that black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Why?

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This entry was posted on Saturday, November 28th, 2009 at 4:32 am and is filed under Blu Ray General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “where did the black bars go on my widescreen dvd’s using a blu-ray player?”

  1. It could be because the aspect ratio of the DVD is the same as the TV (16:9). There are widescreen anamorphic DVDs that have content even wider than 16:9, so for those discs you would still see letterboxing above and below, even on a 16:9 TV. So check the back of the DVD case and look for the aspect ratio, if it says 16:9 then it is normal for it to fill the screen completely.

    There is one other thing that could be happening. If you connected your Blu-ray player to the TV with a yellow RCA cable for video, then you are not sending a 16:9 image to the TV, you are sending a 4:3 one. In that case the player could also be set to crop a widescreen DVD presentation down to 4:3 (hiding the letterbox effect). Then the widescreen TV would stretch the cropped, 4:3 image back out to 16:9.

    If this is the case, you should connect your player to your TV using component or HDMI (preferred) cables. That allows the player to send a widescreen, HD image to the TV.

  2. PoohBearPenguin on November 28th, 2009 at 4:32 am

    Widescreen DVDs are recorded in 16:9 or other widescreen aspect ratio.

    Playing a 16:9 DVD on a 16:9 TV means the movie will fill the whole screen – no black bars needed.

    Full screen DVDs (including most TV shows), meanwhile, are recorded in 4:3. So while they would fill the entire screen of a 4:3 TV, on your 16:9 TV, you’ll get black bars on the sides of the screen unless you told your TV to stretch the picture.

  3. Check the settings on your BluRay player. It’s probably set to zoom things to full screen. Make sure it’s set for a 16:9 TV and letterbox.

  4. Many widescreen DVDs are anamorphic. This means you will see black bars on a 3:4 TV, but it will fill the screen on a 16:9 TV. You’re still seeing the exact same movie in the same aspect ratio, just a larger version of it.

    This is all assuming the zoom or stretch setting isn’t on.

    Here’s more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_widescreen

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