JimRochester

I helped my uncle hook up his new 46" XBR yesterday. We made the adjustments to the cable box and his DVD player to accomodate the 16:9 TV vs. the 4:3 he just replaced. His new SONY s550 should be here by the end of the week. My question is; he still has a beta and a VHS hooked up. When he plays the tapes he is still getting the reduced image. Bars on all four sides. I didn't hook this stuff up but it appeared he had S-video going from the VCR's to the SONY receiver and he uses the receiver as the switch between the two. I was afraid to start playing around because without having done it originally I knew that once I got started I'd end spending hours rewiring everything.

Any clues as to what to look for when I go back to hook up the s550? Obviously these tape players are old enough they don't have a 4:3/16:9 choice in the setup menu. I told him to trash the old stuff but he collects all these obscure music and musicals shows on beta and VHS and isn't ready to give up the players til they die.

shaun3000

So is it a 4:3 letterboxed image? In other words, if he played it on a 4:3 TV, would it be letterboxed? You'll probably need to use one of the zoom/aspect ratio modes on the TV to have it fill the screen. Be warned, it will look horrible.

JimRochester

It's not even just a 4:3 image with bars on the left and right. It's the small image surrounded by black bars on all 4 sides. I never hooked up my VCR to my HDTV because I knew it would look so bad, why bother, plus I really didn't have much but a couple porn tapes left anyway.

Mr. Salty

That still doesn't answer the question, so I'll clarify what shaun was asking: Are the tapes he's watching letterboxed themselves? In other words, if he were watching them on a 4:3 TV, would they have black bars at the top and bottom because they're widescreen?

JimRochester

Ah, now I understand. Let me double check with a few different tapes of known aspect ratios and I'll see how each one looks.