Getting rid of black borders on DVDs when played on a Blu-Ray player

[Conchis]

I have a Panasonic blu-ray player and a Panasonic (Viera) television. When I play certain DVDs (usually of classic television programmes made pre-, say, 1990), the image is cropped to the centre and I get vertical black borders on either side of the screen.

I can adjust this by switching the screen ratio to 'Zoom 2', but this means the picture sometimes becomes cropped (losing the tops of peoples' heads, etc, as well as any subtitles).


Anyone know how I can remove the black bars and get a 'proper', uncrossed picture? I realise it's all about the aspect ratio the source material was made in being different to that of the television set's setting, but it shouldn't be beyond science to change this....

[Dave2002]

Your TV will probably have a widescreen button, with several options including letterbox (for widescreen - which puts black bars at the top and bottom of very wide format source material - 16:9, 4:3 mode, which puts black bars on either side of the viewed portion, anamorphic, which stretches the video in such a way that you might not notice. I think you've solved one problem by using Zoom x 2, but created another.

Besides the TV, you may find that the Blu-Ray player also has modes which you can set in settings - probably under HDMI. I think you might have to either read the manual for your TV and also for the Blu-Ray player - and perhaps also try trial and error experimentation with both the TV and the disc player.

If you post the model numbers, people here might check this out for you.

Good luck.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

What you are seeing is the correct picture. There's no standard aspect ratio for all TV programmes or films. The old academy format 4:3 was almost square, so if you zoom it in to cover the full 1.78:1 format of a modern TV, the chances are you will semi-decapitate the characters being shown. Having black lines down the side is a small price to pay for this. Alternatively, stretching the picture to fill the screen will allow you to see everything without borders, but will display everyone as short and fat. Widescreen films vary in format from 1.85:1 to 2.75:1, so the black bands will be above and below. Again, you can zoom in and lose the action at either side; a good example of this occurs in The Sound of Music during the song "Farewell, Adieu...", when the Von Trapp children lose their heads at either end.

I'm thankful that modern TVs and broadcasts allow us to seen the films in their original formats.

[Dave2002]

I'm thankful that modern TVs and broadcasts allow us to see the films in their original formats.

I agree, but I do think that some old films and TV broadcasts do look pretty awful on some modern sets. I'm not convinced they were so bad in their original state - is there too much "clever" processing going on in modern TVs to cope with old material? A lot of the older material seems very grainy, or the colours are just not right at all.