i just purchased a samsung px2370 and would like to take my comp-based tv show/movie watching more seriously. i plan on watching mostly 720p on either MPC or VLC (whatever's preferred) and just want to know what options i should have set when watching on fullscreen. i'm a fan of letterboxing to get everything thats intended to been in frame but i cant seem to figure out how to get either programs to do this.
It has a lot of good features for setting up a HTPC, just not native support for LFE subwoofers and optical DTS (I think VLC does, if you intend to have such a setup). If you use MPC-HC, make sure when you go to View>Options, under Playback>Output, make the DirectShow Video as Enhanced Video Renderer (custom presenter) and for the Audio Renderer, just put the option that says MPC Audio Renderer.
The other options there you should play around with until you find what works best for your screen. If you connect through an HDMI cable, it should playback fine, but if you need to set up an LFE sub or optical, get FFDShow or VLC for that (they have better audio tweak settings).
One last thing, when you are playing the movie, if you right-click on the video, and there's an option that says Video Frame, in that there are some options for letter-boxing, ones that I would setup are unchecking Keep Aspect Ratio, make sure it has a radial dot where it says Touch Window From Inside, and if you want everything to play at 16:9 then you can Override Aspect Ratio to 16:9. There's also the Pan&Scan options when you right-click for more customization until you find what you like, but I would stop at the "Touch Window From Inside" step if you want to keep the video's original aspect ratio.
Can't really say what your PC setup is, because you just stated you have a monitor, so the rest should be up to you.
