palace

I recently purchased a Sampo 620 and have been watching Region 2 DVDs on an NTSC only TV. I've noticed that on the films I am watching, despite the fact that they are listed as widescreen on the packaging, the picture takes up almost all of the screen.

For example, when watching Snatch this weekend, it looked as though the film was full screen, and many of the subtitles were cut off if they went below the small black bar on the bottom of the screen.

I've tried changing the picture setting on the DVD player, but the results do not vary all that much. Is there something I'm doing wrong here?

joeher

I was experiencing the same problem with "Snatch" and started researching on the web. I found out that with PAL discs the 620 only converts the signal to NTSC but does not convert the anamorphic video to letterbox. Snatch has an anamorphic transfer, enhanced for 16x9 tv's. The NTSC conversion should be fine for non-anamorphic letterbox or 4:3 full screen transfers. A solution would be to purchase a widescreen 16x9 TV (expensive) or a PAL to NTSC converter (I believe Radio Shack carries them).

What I ended up doing is I found a way to get into my Toshiba tv's service mode and changed the height setting. This can be done to other tv brands. The following webpage describes the process.

http://gregl.net/videophile/16x9on4x3.htm


This fix worked fine for me and I was able to enjoy Snatch without any problems. I will have to do this until I can afford a 16x9 tv.

Hope this helps.

Joe

mugwump

Like joeher I too have to pop into the service menu on my TV and adjust the height to get a correct image on my Sampo. The added bonus is that you're able to take advantage of the 16:9 transfer this way and the image looks quite good. The only downside is if you can't access your service menu and make the needed changes.