I have often come across this site from everyone's best friend, Google, when looking for digital video / AV related information. In fact I think I based many purchase decisions on the advice offered in these forums. Thanks :)
Now it's my turn to ask a question as I appear to be rather stuck!
We have recently bought a Pioneer PDP-508XD (50" 1080i), and lovely it surely is. We have got a Vista box running Media Centre which is hooked into the PC input on the PDP-508XD. This all works great except for the occasional operating system crash that seems to be the accepted standard for Vista machines!
The problem I have lies in actually playing back high definition video files that have been ripped from BluRay discs. Basically, our TV is wide-screen, which is 16:9aspect ratio - right?
When I play back supposedly wide-screen content ripped from BluRay, most of the time the video gets 'letter boxed'; that is, the video frame does not fit the display perfectly, and so it is proportionally scaled to fit. This leaves black lines above and below the video frame. I don't want to use the Zoom function because then the video will be cropped and the resolution will lower due to the zoom.
My partner thinks I am being pedantic about this, but I find it intensely annoying being a perfectionist!
VLC tells me that the video stream is 1920x900. Does this equate to 16:9, or is the problem that the person who ripped the video did it wrong?
Many wide screen movies are wider than 16/9 (1.77 AR) -
such as the one you're talking about 1920/900 (2.13 AR)
The only way to properly display said movies is to have the black bars top and bottom.
Even if your TV had a mode to force these films to fill the whole
screen, something has to give. Either it stretches the picture
vertically, giving objects a tall skinny look, or it chops off the
sides and zooms the remaining picture to fill the whole screen.
That way, you maintain the correct AR, but lose the sides.
