Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Older Shows on Dvd

I have some classic TV shows on Dvd that, of course were filmed in 4:3 vs todays widescreen/16:9. I am using both a Denon AVR(2809) and a Denon BD player(BD1800). How do I stop the 4:3 shows from getting "stretched" to fit my Samsung widescreen? I've looked through the owners manual of the AVR and BD player and couldn't find anything....emails to Denon get me their standard response, which is to ignore me. Anyone?

Are you certain that it's not the Samsung that's controlling that? On my Sharp there's a zoom mode that takes 4:3 to full screen.

Did you look in the Samsung manual? There's probably a Mode, Format, or Zoom button on the TV remote, which changes the aspect and cropping of the picture on the screen.

I'll check that out. The Samsung does't affect TV stations that are still in 4:3, but when I throw in a Dvd(eg. orig. Mission Impos) it gets stretched to fit the screen. I figured that because it doesn't stretch regular TV, it wouldn't do it on Dvds. There is an HD/zoom button on the cable box remote which will zoom or stretch TV shows, but doesn't affect the Dvds unless I'm missing a step somewhere. I'll have a good look at the Samsung Owners Manual as well as it's remote, I know the answers there somewhere(4 remotes....4 owners manual....one, maybe two active brain cells trying to figure this out). Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

If the TV box is HD it may be sending a 16:9 picture with black pillar bars included in the frame for 4:3 content.

An upscaling DVD player will usually do the same. But if the DVD player is only outputting 480 lines it'll be assuming the TV is expecting a 4:3 picture.

The TV's default mode will be to fill the screen no matter the picture's aspect ratio.

It’s possible your TV remembers different settings for different inputs but that’s assuming that it’s not all going through the same one.

Based on what you said I’m guessing it’s a setting in your BD player. My Oppo has various stretch/zoom options. There is probably a menu selection that tells it to retain the original format and use black or grey bars on the sides.


An internet search is often more productive than trying to figure out a Denon manual.

Ok. It looks like I need to go into the Samsung menu and either change the screen size setting or....Wahoo! it's all good, tks guys....just have to go through numerous menus to change it. Why oh why, don't any of these components just recognize the format from the disc when you load it?

I always wished I had of taken a foreign language course in University.

The only component which knows the format of the disc is the player. After that only assumptions can be made. It is probably best to assume it is an anamorphic* image and stretch it to the screen, as that's most common format for recent releases. But as you've found that's wrong for older TV shows.

Modern upscaling DVD players do the right thing. They make everything into a 16:9 image (adding black bars to the left and right of 4:3 content) and scale it up to a 16:9 format (1280x720 or 1920x1080). That'll always display correctly.

*All DVDs have the same resolution picture 720x480, some store the image with a 33% vertical stretch, which needs to have the same amount of horizontal stretch applied by the display. If the display can't apply that stretch the player can be configured to reverse the vertical stretch before output (this loses 25% of the lines of resolution).

I may be misreading you but you should have to keep changing it. My old Samsung has buttons on the remote for “pmode” and “psize” (I think) one or both of which if set correctly will automatically detect the format of the incoming signal and display it in it’s native format if you wish. Note the functions are on the remote and not in the on screen menu.