Dish 34" HD Monitor & DVD Aspect Ratio Problem

[csalmon]

I have had the Dish 34" HD monitor for several months now and have been marginally satisfied with it. I just upgraded my old non-progressive scan DVD player to one that supports progressive 480p. I have the DVD player hooked up through the component input on the TV and It seems that the TV is forcing every DVD to run at 16x9 regardless of the native aspect ratio. This is causing picture distortions on every DVD that is not 16x9. The TV also blocks me from changing its display ratio while it is on the component or DVI inputs so I cannot change it.

This is very frustrating, has anyone else seen this issue? Does anyone know if there is a fix of some kind?

 

[j5races]

sure, turn off progressive scan on dvds that are not widescreen.

 

[csalmon]

Uhm, this is no help whatsoever.

As I said before, this phenomenon happens with all DVDs "regardless of native aspect ratio". This means widescreen also.

For example, if I put a DVD in that is formatted 2.44:1 (widescreen) the image on the screen will be stretched/squished to fill the 16x9 viewable area. This results in an image that looks stretched/sqished.

I have checked all output settings on the DVD player and they are all right, this is in the formatting circuitry of the TV.

 

[David_Levin]

Your 2.44:1 comment doesn't really make sense. All DVDs are either 4:3 or 16:9. A 2.44 or 2.33 image will be on the DVD as a letterboxed 16:9.

That said, yes, when the TV is receiving 480p or higher image it forces a 16:9 image. The scaling modes are not accessible.

Apparently, there are some DVD players (Panasonic?) that when set to 16:9 have an option to distort (horizontally compress) a 4:3 DVD so it will appear correct on a 16:9 TV.

As j5races says, if you turn off progressive on your DVD player it'll work like your old player.

You do realize that a progressive scan DVD player (especially a cheap one) is not necessarly going to get you a better picture then a non-progressive.

The TV also have the ability to create a progressive image from an interlaced source. It just comes down to whether the DVD or TV player has the better scaler.

I just leave my DVD player in 480i mode (so the TV scaling can be used). I don't see much difference in picture quality (especially at only 34").

(This problem is even more frequent with my DVD recorder. Everything from it's internal tuner is sent to the TV as 4:3).

 

[csalmon]

Thanks for the feedback! The player is a Yamaha DV-S5750 and I think I may have discovered some of the problem. It turns out a few of the DVDs I was trying are Divx encoded movies burned to DVDR. The movies are not formatted for DVD and are in their native aspect ratio (hence the odd aspect ratios). The player is Divx certified but must handle them in a way that distorts them on the TV.

Always a learning experience!