[jwlawler]

I played a 4:3 SD DVD for the first time in my Panasonic BD35. It appeared zoomed in. I would have preferred pillar box style (all the picture in the correct aspect ratio) but I could not find how to get this. I looked through all options and even read the manual, it just told me to use the TV's options. Well playing with the TV options did nothing useful, they just distorted the partial picture. Is there something that I have missed.

I had to give up and play the disc in the Toshiba EP35.

TV is Samsung LE46M86. Connected via Onkyo 605.

The disc was La Traviata.

[SeeleyBooth]

Whats The Disc You Are Trying To Play ??

Ive Played Loads Of Friends discs and sabrina the teenage witch Via My 35 and they play in widescreen and look Right (both of these are 4.3 framed)

[Shaun666]

Do you not have a 4:3 setting on your tv ? Mine does and it works perfectly. You should always use the tv controls to change aspect ratio.
The only time you'd use the player's controls is the first time you set it up to tell it you have a widescreen tv.

[jwlawler]

Originally Posted by SeeleyBooth

Whats The Disc You Are Trying To Play ??

Ive Played Loads Of Friends discs and sabrina the teenage witch Via My 35 and they play in widescreen and look Right (both of these are 4.3 framed)

Thanks.

Here is the disc: Verdi: La Traviata -- Venice [1992]: Amazon.co.uk: Edita Gruberova, Neil Shicoff, Giorgio Zancanaro, Mariana Pentcheva, Antonella Trevisan, Max René Cossotti, Orazio Mori, Paolo Maria Orecchia, Francesco Musinu, Derek Bailey, Alexandre Dumas fils, Fr

[jwlawler]

Originally Posted by Shaun666

Do you not have a 4:3 setting on your tv ? Mine does and it works perfectly. You should always use the tv controls to change aspect ratio.
The only time you'd use the player's controls is the first time you set it up to tell it you have a widescreen tv.

Thanks.

I have played with the "Picture size" setting on the TV. This cycles through options such as: Just scan, Wide, 4:3, and a few others that I forget at the moment. But, for this disc at least, none of them look right. For a start, when there are two lines of subtitles, the second line always falls off the bottom.

If I put the same disc in the Toshiba EP35, it immediately plays as I would like it to: the whole picture, not distorted and black bars at the sides. I can get this result from the BD35.

[tvtyke]

Non-anamorphic disc. You'll have to swap the AR via your TV. Loads of discs have this 'issue' (all the Cheers sets, for one )

[jwlawler]

Originally Posted by tvtyke

Non-anamorphic disc. You'll have to swap the AR via your TV. Loads of discs have this 'issue' (all the Cheers sets, for one )

Thanks.

I will play again over the weekend. I have tried all the size options offered by the "Picture size" button on the remote control but I have not yet gone into the menus.

There is a very simple solution which is to play this disc in the EP35 which gets it right without any trouble. Up to now, I have been using the BD35 for SDs and CDs but it seems that for some SDs, at least, the EP35 is the better choice.

[jwlawler]

Doing another test now. I found another 4:3 disc and it plays as I would wish without any effort. The only problem is that the bars at the side are grey rather than black. Is there an option to change this? I can't find one.

Despite that success, when I put La Traviata in, it comes up in zoomed in mode so we are losing the top and bottom of the picture. Playing with "P.SIZE" on the controller does not help. In 4:3 mode, I get the pillars but only because the same picture has been squashed. I am still losing the top and bottom and and the rest is distorted. The only options that I can find in the menu seem to just duplicate the modes offered by the picture size button on the controller.

I tried another 4:3 disc by the same company (NVC Arts): Le Nozze Di Figaro. Oddly, it displayed correctly. So, the problem seems to be limited to just one of my discs. I need to remember to play this disc in the EP35. Another oddity of this disc is that if I select English subtitles using the disc's menu, I get nothing yet selecting subtitles using the player's option does work.