whoopdido

I know this has been talked about before, but I looked at the other threads and none of them really answered my question, so here we go again. I have a Sony XBR high def tv that has the following modes: Normal, Full, Zoom and Wide Zoom. Obviously normal is for watching something in 4:3 and I'm not interested in Zoom, so my question is about wide zoom vs full. I'm trying to find the best possible mode for watching anamorphic widescreen dvds. It seems like when it's on full everything seems just a little stretched and people look fat, but on wide zoom the extreme top and bottom of the picture gets cut off. This is most easily seen on Criterion dvds during the setup screen because the very tops of the words "Criterion Collection get cut off. Also I was watching Jurassic Park the other day and I noticed that when the Brachiasaurus first shows up at the beginning in wide zoom the very top of his head is cut off, but in full mode the whole head can be seen. So, does anybody know which is the best mode--wide zoom or full? By the way, my dvd player is set to 16:9. Thanks.

Chew

A bit more of a DVD & Home Theater Forum question, I think?

Does your TV have an auto-detect setting? I have a Toshiba HDTV and it has "Normal, Theater Wide 1, 2, 3, and Full". Normal for 4:3 and Full for anamorphic stuff. When the TV detects anamorphic, it will switch to Full and when it doesn't, it goes back to Normal. If your TV has auto-detect, that should solve the problem. Just check what it's set on after it switches.

JLyon1515

You just want to leave it at Normal if you have a widescreen TV. Make sure your DVD player is set to widescreen mode as well.

whoopdido

Yeah, I was on the fence about which forum to put this into. Anyway, if I leave it on normal then it will always be 4:3 so there will be black bars on the side. I don't want that. I'll check and see if my tv has auto-detect.