ALIENS .......why isn't it widescreen?!
 

It says it is widescreen but when I play it on my TV it is full screen! What do I do? This also happens with The Ring widescreen. HELP.

If the characters appear very tall and thin, your DVD player may be in 16:9 mode. Turn on your DVD player without a disc in the tray, and configure the player's settings so that the screen size setting is 4:3.

It's in your settings.

wouldnt you want the DVD player set to 16x9 for a wide screen dvd playing on a wide screen tv?

Yes, assuming he has a 16x9 tv... if he has a 4:3 tv, he should change the settings to letterbox.

Yes, what everyone said :)

If he has a 16x9 TV and doesn't realize that that *is* widescreen and, thus, the widescreen DVD would fill the screen but still be widescreen, I'd say the original poster has far worse problems than could be answered on a website.

I think the likelihood is what others said, that he has a 4:3 TV and the DVD player is set wrong. But you're right, it is possible that he didn't realize he had a widescreen TV.

"Hey, when did that big-ass TV show up??" :hscratch:

;)



BTW, when you change your settings, there should be 3 options:
1. Standard (4:3)/Pan and Scan
2. Standard (4:3)/Letterbox
3. Widescreen (16X9)

If you have a widescreen TV, choose #3.

If you have a standard TV, you should choose #2...

Option #1 is only for people that can't stand widescreen (those darn black bars!) and will artificially zoom and pan the widescreen disc according to cues embedded in the DVD. AFAIK, there aren't very many discs that actually have this option, as most studios have just made two versions of the film, either on the same disc, on a separate disc in the same package, as two separate packages, or just choosing one format or the other to release.

or if you have a 4:3 HDTV that can be turned into Widescreen mode:
1. DVD Player = Widescreen (16x9)
2. TV = Switch to WS mode while watching WS DVDs or Wacting HD TV Programs

Re: ALIENS .......why isn't it widescreen?!
 

Resolving your problem is impossible without knowing what TV and DVD player you have.

ok i'll try but i wathced movies recently and they appeared widescreen and so did alien resurrection of the same set. arrrgghh complications

ok it works! thanks so much u guys! NOW can anyone explain why this is like it is? why so many movies have played widescreen on my settings and then it won't play this movie widescreen? it's weird

The movies it was playing in WS were probably non-anamorphic titles.

They are right, you need to check your settings. This happened to me too. It seems that most widescreen DVD's don't really need the #2 setting (as described in Little Fuzzy's post above)to play in letterbox on standard TV's. It's not a matter of the anamorphic process either. Eventually you come across one that does need that setting to work. I was happily watching all my w/s letterbox movies on my 1.33 TV and they were all playing in their proper OAR's. Then I picked up "Target Earth" which claimed to be w/s but it played in full screen on my set. Took me a while to figure it out but I remembered seeing that setting in the DVD menu and it never seemed to make any difference either way. I tried switching it and it fixed T.E. immediately so I leave it on the #2 option now.

ALL HAIL PROBLEM SOLVERS

...no it isn't: (too) many "widescreen" (1.66:1, 1.78:1, 1.85:1, 2.00:1, 2.20:1, 2.35:1) movies on DVD are not "enhanced for 16:9 TVs" (= transferred anamorphically), but rather are transferred in the letterbox mode - these would play on a standard (= 4:3) -and on a widescreen (= 16:9)- TV as "letterbox widescreen"... You didn't actually say whether you have one or the other - but if you do have a 16:9 TV you should set your player to 16:9 - and leave it there once and for all...

. . . :o . . .

Are you viewing these on a widescreen TV or a standard 4:3 television? I don't know about The Ring, but I know that the aspect ratio on ALIENS is 1:85 while the other three ALIEN films are in 2:35 scope ratio. So on some widescreen sets you may not even be able to see the thin black bands across the top and bottom.

If you are watching on a standard TV, ALIENS should look like this
http://img85.exs.cx/img85/3654/ALIENS-ltbx.jpg

If your dvd player is not properly set up, it will look like this
http://img46.exs.cx/img46/5731/ALIENS-squeezed.jpg


Alien Resurrection should look like this
http://img46.exs.cx/img46/623/ALIENRESS-ltbx.jpg

if your player is not set properly you will still see black bands because of the wider apect ratio of the film and the image will look like this
http://img46.exs.cx/img46/1863/ALIENRESS-squeezed.jpg

If you are watchiing these on a widescreen television they should
like these

ALIENS
http://img76.exs.cx/img76/7835/ALIENS-widetv.jpg

ALIEN RESURERECTION
http://img76.exs.cx/img76/4995/ALIENRESS-widetv.jpg

I wonder which version of "Aliens" you have. I'm still a bit puzzled but I did some testing on my own anyway.

I'm betting that most people here set their DVD player to "LB" and have never even checked to see what the pan and setting does or doesn't do...or they may have never checked to see what mode it is in. On most discs it has no effect at all either way. Observe:
Just to clairify, I did a simple test with 6 discs

Target Earth/ non anamorphic approx 1.85
The Thing (Carpenter)/ non anamorphic approx 2.35
Three days of the Condor/ Anamorphic 2.35
Frantic/full screen 1.33
Aliens -special edition 1.85
Aliens from the Quadrilogy 1.85

I have 2 DVD players, a JVC xvsa600 player and a Philips PV642. Both are playing on 1.33 conventional TV's.

Ready for the astounding, earth-shattering results?

Trying both settings on both DVD players with all 6 DVD's

The settings only made a difference on "Target Earth"
Both DVD players play it correctly in the "LB" at approx 1.85 but brought it up to full screen in the P/S mode.

The 5 other discs mentioned, including both Aliens versions played in the AR's they were presented in. regardless of whether the DVD players were set to LB or PS. With both DVD players, the setting made no difference at all in the AR on these discs.


Would be curious to hear from others with 1.33 sets who try this setting.

the only dvd that i have that has the "4x3 auto pan and scan" mode is the canadian 3 disc "brotherhood of the wolf"

I have a 4:3 TV, but I set my DVD player to 16:9. (ie. I have 16:9 enhanced mode.)

It amazes me to the number of people who have no clue about the settings on their players and TVs.

IT'S ALL IN THE MANUAL, FOLKS!!! READ IT!!!

...but of course!... because: although you do in effect have a 4:3 TV (is it a SONY WEGA, by any chance?), it incorporates a 16:9 "squeeze" mode --- however, afaik, and at least in this country, relatively (very?) few 4:3 sets actually have this mode as a feature...

...you are right about reading the manual - many people think they "know better" and are "punished" for it...

...btw: for the "auto pan & scan" feature (which is incorporated on the player!!!) to work, a DVD must be encoded accordingly - offhand I can't think of any discs that are thus encoded - although I am sure there must be one, or two, possibly even three, out of the tens of thousands of titles available...

. . . :o . . .

And that it would be. We've got two of them, matter of fact.

Well, I've seen a set at Wal Mart, a 4:3 HDTV that had what was called "cinematic mode". It was essentially Sony's 16:9 enhanced mode, except that it was on all the time, basically. Sony's has to be activated everytime you turn it on and use the appropriate video input mode. eg. Video 1 is S-Video from my sateliite reciever, Video 2 is RCA jacks on front, Video 3 is RCA jacks on back, and Video 4 is Component for DVD.

Yep, and I still don't understand those "memory settings" and whatnot. :p

Yep, don't know of any that do. But of course, isn't that the whole rationale behind putting out Fullscreen DVDs? If double encoding a widescreen DVD to do auto P&S would neglect the need for separate P&S versions, would it not?

You bought the family version of Aliens and all the nasty bits on the right and left side have been chopped off. :)

Every once in a while, a disc is encoded this way by mistake (e.g., the original pressing of Criterion's The Last Temptation of Christ). Many people don't realize they had their player mistakenly set to "4x3 P&S" until they try to play such a disc. Someone will start a thread about this every couple of months ("Why is 'X Movie' playing fullscreen?!").

DJ

Well you know of at least one title that triggers the feature because I posted about it above. "Target Earth" from VCI entertainment uses that feature.

Since the setting appeared to make no difference on all DVD's bought previously I never changed it. TE was the first and AFAIK it's the only disk I have where changing the LB/p&S setting actually does what it's supposed to do. Since I prefer movies in OAR as do most of us here, I leave it on the LB mode which means basically the feature is "off."

I guess for whatever reason, most companies chose not to take advantage of this automatic PS/LB function. The"letterbox defeat" as it's offered on some models now is the same idea but it's not triggered by the DVD, it's just switched on or off manually. It's basically just a zoom or maybe 2 levels of zoom. You would just turn it off for full screen titles.

Once again, the DVDtalk forum saves the day.

Or reitterates what the manual already says... ;)

I couldn't agree more. And the thing is people do this all the time, and complain about not knowing how to use something.

"You mean there's an owner's manual with my car?"

Not with mine! I asked for an AUTOMATIC, dammit!

As a nitpicky point, 16x9-enhanced widescreen transfers are normally letterboxed, too, except those of 1.78:1 and 1.66:1 (which is letterboxed on 4:3 sets but pillarboxed on widescreen sets).

:D Fixed my OP thanks to Donna :D

First time I've seen that term, I wondered what they would call it. So now we have letterbox, windowbox, and pillarbox.

And what do we do about 1.33 OAR movies and TV shows coming out on DVD to play on the new 16x9 screens? Are they going to (scope?) and scan them to fit on wide screen? Are we going to have DVD's coming out in 2 versions again and with a whole new controversy?

Ideally, they'd be pillarboxed, but I think we'll be faced with a lot of tilting-and-scanning.