Ok More AV questions....

[Hornin NYC]

Since there's a huge thread-trashing image on my other thread I have a few questions now...

I hooked up the TV last night to test it with just the DVD attached and turned it on.

Can someone explain the screen modes to me?

I tossed in a widescreen DVD and it was "letterboxed" in the "wide" tv format on the HDTV.

You could "zoom" it and make it fit the whole screen without cropping anything out but I thought DVDs were 16:9 and the TV was 16:9 and that DVDs would naturally take up the whole screen (crazy?).

Then again I could easily have not set everything up correctly. Obviously.

I only had it using Svideo too since I haven't bought my component video cables but it still looked damn good.

 

[Hornin NYC]

Ok I got the answer form a geek here.

Most DVDs aren't 1080i so it's normal for them to be letterboxed.

 

[Boozehound]

The resolution isn't what makes the difference in the aspect ratio. It's how the movie was shot and then packaged. There's 1.85:1 Anamorphic (should be no letterboxing), I believe 2.35:1 (or some such) which leads to letter boxing, and I think there's at least another 1 or 2 aspect ratios put out by DVD makers. The 'zoom' feature takes your letterboxed picture and crops the top and bottom so it appears as though there is no letterboxing. All of these are intended to be played on 16x9 TVs, but depending on how they were shot and edited, they will appear differently on your TV.

A good link:The Link

Need other AV help from the pros?
The Link

 

[Hornin NYC]

thanks that explains it