True widescreen

March 11, 2006 8:13 PM

Likely a very stupid question, but it's making me insane.

I have a widescreen laptop. When I play widescreen DVDs on it (maximized) they still have the "black bars" as if they're playing on a regular sized TV. I've tried playing with the various display settings in Windows Media Player, Nero 7 and Intervideo WinDVD 5 to no avail.

Any ideas how I can truly maximize a widescreen DVD on a widescreen laptop?

posted by aclevername to computers & internet (14 comments total)

Wikipedia on widescreen. So, there are many possible aspect ratios , you will see bars on most programing no matter what aspect ratio your screen has.
posted by Chuckles at 8:15 PM on March 11, 2006

I'm not sure I've ever seen a 16:9 laptop (most widescreen laptops are a bit narrower), and many DVDs use a wider aspect ratio than that.

Are you asking how to cut the sides off and zoom it up to fill the screen?
posted by cillit bang at 8:26 PM on March 11, 2006

what I would suggest is this: find out what your screen resolution is. (y'now, like 1024x768 or whatever). make it a ratio. Look on your DVD case and see what ratio it's presented in. If the ratios don't match, you're going to get black bars somewhere as the film's aspect ratio is preserved on your screen.

Now, if you don't care if you're streching the picture a little bit to fill your screen, then you should be able to configure your player to fill the screen. On this front I'm useless as I'm away from home and unable to check the settings in my own players...
posted by chudmonkey at 8:26 PM on March 11, 2006

Agreeing with Chuckles. I think the only way you're going to be able to eliminate those "black bars" on the top and bottom of the picture is to have a "full screen" DVD. DVDs are often made as either full or wide screen. Some as both, one form on each side of the disk. Without a full screen DVD I think you're SOL. Hope this helps some.
posted by viachicago at 8:26 PM on March 11, 2006

Surely a "full screen"(which just means 4:3) dvd would have sidebars on a widescreen dvd picture?

It's worth noting that a normal widescreen movie is 1.85:1, and a normal wide screen is 1.78:1, so there are very small black bands at the top and bottom of a widescreen dvd on a widescreen tv, but they're usually hidden by the overscan.

People who are annoying jerks about this, as I am, would tell you that you should ignore the black bars and just watch it in the correct aspect ratio.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:39 PM on March 11, 2006

Most widescreen laptops and computer monitors are actually 16:10, so even if you have a 'normal' widescreen movie, it won't quite fill the screen top to bottom.

Sadly, 'widescreen' means multiple different things. 16:9 is the basic (HDTV) format... it is 1.85 to 1.

There are three major formats used for video and movies. 4:3 is the standard-def TV you're used to... 1.33 to 1. HDTV widescreen is 16:9, or 1.78 to 1. Computer widescreen, as above, is 1.85 to 1. And the widest format in common usage is 2.35 to 1.

No one monitor or display device will do a perfect job with all these formats. The farther away from the 'correct' format you are, the larger your black bars will be; if you're on a monitor that's too wide, the bars will be on the left and right.

16:10 is a good compromise among all the different sizes... it lets you use the most pixels the most often. It's perfect at 16:10, nearly perfect at 16:9, and usable at the other resolutions. If your monitor were wider, standard def would look bad, and if it were narrower (ie, the old standard) then widescreen would look awful.

If you really absolutely hate black bars, most display devices will have methods of stretching the screen out, but that will mess up the aspect ratio.

And yes, it annoyed me too when I first learned about this. "What do you mean I still have black bars? Ack!' :)
posted by Malor at 9:00 PM on March 11, 2006

Well, I thank you all so far, it seems that it might be impossible to have a widescreen DVD play "fullscreen" on a widescreen laptop.

I guess I just assumed with a widescreen laptop screen, a widescreen DVD would play truly to the borders of the screen.

Nevertheless, some of the tips here might make viewing more palatable.

Thanks.
posted by aclevername at 9:01 PM on March 11, 2006

Dammit, i didn't proof well enough. Standard HDTV is 1.78 to 1. Computer widescreen is 1.6 to 1. 1.85 is yet another widescreen format... computers are NOT that format. My apologies.
posted by Malor at 9:04 PM on March 11, 2006

I have a "widescreen" screen on my laptop, and you won't ever find anything that fully feels the entire screen. However, watching a widescreen on this type of screen is far better than watching a full screen movie. My thoughts.
posted by Atreides at 9:14 PM on March 11, 2006

The black bars are just on the top and bottom, right? If the picture doesn't look stretched then your DVD player software is probably doing it correctly.

You might want to try Media Player Classic. It has a customizable option (View -> Pan & Scan) that lets you adjust the aspect ratio to whatever you want.
posted by neckro23 at 9:37 PM on March 11, 2006

neckro23: Yes they are just at the top and bottom.

I'll look into Media Player Classic.

Cheers!
posted by aclevername at 10:14 PM on March 11, 2006

If you use mplayer, you can pan-and-scan as you watch just by hitting the W and E keys. It's also got cropdetect and crop filters, which you can use to play video in a window with the black bars clipped off.
posted by flabdablet at 10:25 PM on March 11, 2006

Film is not 1.85 to 1, 16x9 or anything else.

Guide to understanding Original Aspect Ratio.

An aside: all DVDs are 720x480...a "widescreen" or 16x9 DVD (that has the 16x9 flag in the MPEG-2 file) is still....720x480.

NTSC widescreen makes wide pixels rather than tall pixels to make this happen (think lego blocks on their side, rather than your computer's square pizels).

So, the size of the black bars ought to be different in a widescreen format based on the size of the orignal + the method of encoding (and decoding) the DVD.
posted by filmgeek at 6:42 AM on March 12, 2006

The above guide claims that few films shoot in super 35. Which is misleading, if not downright wrong.
posted by nathancaswell at 1:59 PM on March 12, 2006