the 2:35 ratio blu rays play with the black bars on my ps3 but my 1:85 ones such as robocop play without them and i dont get it. i tried messing around with the settings on the ps3 but nothing. any help? is it even supposed to have the bars? im so used to having the bars there and i like it that way, maybe they arent supposed to be there i dont know

edit:if i leave it on the 16x9 setting on my tv i dont even get the little black bars but if i use the just scan option i do get them. maybe i figured it out

yeah this is prolly a redundant question and i apologize i thought i knew this stuff too but i just started watching blu rays and it threw me off

1.85:1 movies should not have black bars. 2.35:1 movies have them because they are wider and don't fit your screen exactly.

not even the little ones?

If you have your TV in dot-by-dot mode -- no overscan at all -- you should see faint letterboxing with 1.85:1 films. What you're seeing is normal and correct.

As already stated, you won't see any black bars for a 1.85:1 transfer. A 16x9 screen is 1.78:1 ratio and the overscan of most displays will eliminate the black bars.

I'm not sure what you meant by "scan option", but make sure your PS3 is set to the correct aspect ratio for your display, and your display is not "zooming".

XMB>Settings>Display Settings>Select TV Type>16X9

http://manuals.playstation.net/docum...deooutput.html

yeah i have all that set correctly. its "just scan" though and not scan option. with the just scan i zoom it back a little bit and get a little more picture and the little bars than if it was on 16x9. the little bit more of picture seems like that would be the correct setting but if you guys are saying 16x9 is the correct setting ill leave it on that one

Pretty much every TV produced in the past few years has a dot-by-dot mode with zero overscan. It's very clear that Dave23's set is in a mode that doesn't have overscan.

Ignore them. You want the dot-by-dot mode you had before where you'd see slight letterboxing bars. It's the purest, most pixel-for-pixel accurate picture you can get. Unless you absolutely can't stomach the sight of those few scanlines of letterboxing bars on 1.85:1 discs, stick with what you had before.

i got a year old 32 inch sammy. but yeah the bars is what i wanted and what i assumed would be most accurate, that isnt what i had originally though. unless i change it, it basically looks like fullscreen and thats what i cant stomach lol

I think we are talking apples/oranges here.

I don't want to confuse you, but 16x9 is the correct setting in the PS3 menu. Your display settings terminology varies by manufacturer, but the one you want will show the tiniest of "bars" top & bottom when watching a 1.85:1 disc (on my Kuro Plasma it's called "dot-by-dot").

There is another setting that will "zoom" slightly, and hide them, but you really don't want that setting for movies. (It is sometimes desirable when watching HD cable or satellite when there is no picture information in the extreme margins and you can see white noise).

Note that sometimes a transfer that is "1.85:1" will actually be 1.78:1 and you won't see any letterboxing. I know Warner and Paramount do this, probably others. Don't worry about losing anything, as they just open the mattes a little.

What you should want, and what would be most accurate would be to see the movie displayed in the proper aspect ratio, whether it's 1.85:1, 2.35:1 or something else.

You really need to read about what aspect ratio means. You can do so here.

Based on my experiences with my old Panasonic DVD-S35 progressive-scan DVD player and now a Sony BDP-S370 Blu-ray player playing back my old copy of the Platinum Edition of Beauty and the Beast animated feature (which is 1.85:1 anamorphic aspect ratio), you can see a very tiny amount of horizontal black bars on my Sony 40" HDTV display. Of course, movies with 2.35:1 anamorphic display on DVD or Blu-ray will show horizontal black bars, but I don't mind that because my display is now so big.