Topic: Blu-Ray Question

[addicted2dvd]

As I have said in the other thread... This weekend I have my daughter's Blu-ray player hooked to my (old fashion standard) TV. I got to say... even on an old CLT TV... I am pretty impressed. Both the colors and the details are better then I expected.

One thing does have me confused though. In my collection I have 4 movies on Blu-ray (BR/DVD Combo Packs). So far I have watched 3 of them. On 2 of the three the picture zoomed in to fll my screen... basically giving me a cropped image I am sure. The 3rd one gave me the black bars as I would have expected.

Basically what I want to know is why 2 different types of results? 

So far with what I watched...

- Splice
I got a zoomed in image... no way I could find to get the entire picture with the black bars above and below

- Three Stooges: The Movie
I got a zoomed in image... no way I could find to get the entire picture with the black bars above and below

- Red Riding Hood
This one I got the full image... along with the black bars above and below.

Anyone have any ideas as to why? Will most the blu-rays I watch on a standard TV give me a zoomed in image?

[kahless]

Hi Pete,

I'm not really sure if I understand it correctly. You are connecting a HD device (blu ray player) to an SD device (CLT TV)? This combination will not give you the HD experience as it should be and maybe the TV does not convert the analog HD input signal in the correct way (e.g. aspect/ratio).  

The only idea I have is that you try to get a TV with an hdmi input. This would enable in connection with a blu ray player the hd experience!

Other ideas from this forum welcome...  

[Jimmy]

You are connecting a HD device (blu ray player) to an SD device (CLT TV)? This combination will not give you the HD experience as it should be and maybe the TV does not convert the analog HD input signal in the correct way (e.g. aspect/ratio).

That make no difference for the showing aspect, I use a non-HD monitors with my reader and the image are shown as they are supposed too. The only problem is if a film is non 16x9, in those cases yes the image will no show correctly as the image are zoomed-in and sadly you have to live with that as the old monitor can't deal with that (they can zoom-in, but can't zoom-out). 

[Dragonfire]

It could be because your tv can't handle the widescreen images. 
I think I have some on Blu that fill the entire screen on my tv..and it is a widescreen set..others don't.  I would think that some of it would be tied to what the original format of the movie is.  But I'm just guessing.

[addicted2dvd]

I am back to my DVD player now... at least I got all my blu-ray discs watched! 

I noticed it did the same thing with my DVDs as well. I think I will just stick to a DVD player until I get a widescreen TV.

[Dragonfire]

Once you are able to get one of those, you'll really see the difference when you use the Blu-ray player.  I even notice a difference when playing DVDs on it. 

[Eommen]

If you haven't got a widescreen TV yet, make sure the aspect ration for the TV (4:3) is correctly set on the set-up parameters of the BluRay player. These older TV's get an analog signal and cannot transmit back their capabilities to the disk player, so if the player has a mismatched set-up things like you described can happen.

[addicted2dvd]

I did have it set in the settings... but it still happened with some of the titles I watched.

[Eommen]

Well, flat widescreen TV's that have a HDMI input are getting cheaper by the day...

Certainly if you let go of hype items like 3D and 'Smart TV' (meaning it is a bit like a tablet PC accessing the internet or a DNLA device like your PC), screen size and brand (Sony and JVC are notoriously expensive and LG and Samsung are usually the cheapest over here) determine price. Here, a 40" widescreen TV retails around 400 euro the cheapest, which is including local sales tax. Of course I do not know your household priorities...