Boot

Recently I bought a cheap dvd player for the office (a Digix that was on sale for $35 that got pretty decent reviews). This weekend, my wife wanted to watch Sleepless in Seattle while she worked on something, but when she started the movie and selected the widescreen option (she can't stand full screen ever since I converted her), it played full screen. I checked the settings on the player, and it was indeed set to "wide." I checked the disc on our Toshiba and it played widescreen just fine. Ultimately I had to set the Digix player to "letterbox" in order to play the widescreen format of the disc. Is there a logical explanation for this, or is there something wrong with my player?

BTW, I have not tried another disc on the player yet.

audrey

The settings on the player should match the format of the TV; e.g. if you have a widescreen TV set the player to widescreen (16:9); if you have a standard TV use the standard (4:3) setting in the DVD player's setup menu. This is an option that only needs to be set once (unless you change TV's to one with a different aspect ratio).

BTW: if this is one of those dics w/ widescreen on one side and standard on the other, you might try flipping the disc--I've noticed several titles that seem to be printed "backwards" from the norm.

Boot

Ah, well that makes sense then. Thanks Audrey!

phraseturner

there's a bit more to that answer. players should have three settings:

4:3 Pan and Scan
4:3 Letterbox
16:9 Widescreen

If you want to view letterbox films on a square TV, choose 4:3 letterbox.

audrey

Technically your're correct--I s/d have been more specific--but since no one AFAIK has implemented dynamic P&S it really doesn't matter which setting you use.