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

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

  1. mattmatt32 says:

    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 says:

    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. link says:

    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. Peter D says:

    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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