Ok I'm having a problem. I've been trying to watch this movie called Lifeboat. It's an old movie that was filmed in academy ratio, or 4:3. Now, I have a new 65" Mitsubishi HDTV DLP TV, and a new LG DN191H upconverter which i have set to output to a 16x9 tv, at 1080i. So every DVD pretty much looks as good as it can be for a DVD anyway. The problem is that no matter which setting I choose, this 4:3 dvd keeps being stretched out on the TV. I can't watch the movie like that!!!!! I hate when everything is stretched out like that especially since the movie was originally filmed in 4:3. I've tried the wide mode settings on my tv, and the only option available is to stretch it out even more. I've also tried telling my dvd player that my tv is 4:3 even though it isn't. That doesn't help either. So I think the problem is that this particular dvd is set to output by filling up the screen, no matter how wide it is. This obviously would look fine on any 4:3 tv but doesn't work on my wide set!!!! Does anyone have any suggestions for things I could try to get the dvd to be pillarboxed like it ought to be? Like the way I have my normal cable tv set up. Even if that means ripping the dvd and reburning it on a blank one somehow. I'd really like to somehow fix the settings on my dvd player or tv to avoid that tho. Any suggestions?
.................and i fixed my own problem. Anyway, in case anyone else has this problem, so they dont waste an hour trying to fix it: If you have an upconverting dvd player, you MIGHT have to lower the resolution back down to 480p, otherwise you can only watch widescreen dvds. Then depending on your tv, you might have to set the wide-format to Narrow, like u do on mine. Some tvs only support 4:3 in 480p/i signals. I found this the hard way. It should only affect a few dvds, cuz I'm betting most of you have all widescreen dvds. Formatted DVDs suck anyway, especially now with these wide tv sets. But the movies before 1955 were filmed that way, so you aren't losing anything with the pillarboxing. Moral of the story is its better to watch dvds in the aspect they were filmed in.
