Aspect ratio question about the official Thundarr the Barbarian DVD-R's

[AnamorphicWidescreen]

Originally Posted by Supermartyoh

So it seems the DVDs are flagged wrong. But i'm puzzled about your BD player, mine (Magnavox thing from 2011) stretches 4:3 non-anamorphic content to 16:9 on any video output to my Insignia 32", and theirs no way to set it back in the player settings but that TV can squeeze the image back on the 4:3 screen setting.

The reason why 4:3 content on Blus display correctly is because (in most cases) the 4:3 content is encoded as 1920x1080 16:9 with black horizontal borders, so it doesn't do any stretching or fiddling around as Blu ray 1080p displays as 1:1 native. However, I've seen some 4:3 Blu-Rays (from mostly bargain bin and low budget labels) that are stretched to fill the entire 1920x1080 16:9 width, with the 2009 Gulliver's Travels BD and a 50 pack of upscaled PD westerns on one Blu ray disc coming to mind.

Interesting - thanks for the feedback here. Yes, it could be my Blu player. I got a new one over the summer (Sony), and my previous one was a Samsung. I'll have to check this out.

That being said, my impression was that my newer Sony Blu player would show a TV show/movie in 4:3 if they're set up that way, on both DVD's & Blu's. I recently watched my Blair Witch Project regular DVD (not Blu) on this playet, and it did show as the correct almost-full-screen aspect ratio. I will need to check & see if any other full-screen DVD's/Blu's I have also are shown with the correct 4:3 aspect ratio.

However, I agree that it sounds like my Thundarr DVD's were flagged incorrectly to begin with; i.e., it appears that they were modified from full-screen to fit onto a widescreen set - which means that I'm losing some of the image. Again, I don't want to fiddle around with the aspect ratio settings on the set/player TOO much, since I'm concerned about screwing this up & not being able to re-set this back.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by AnamorphicWidescreen

Again, I don't want to fiddle around with the aspect ratio settings on the set/player TOO much, since I'm concerned about screwing this up & not being able to re-set this back.

If the DVDs are incorrectly flagged the player settings won't help much, just cycle through your TV's picture options until you hit 4:3, the cycle back to your current one after your done. You shouldn't really lose too much picture unless your 4:3 mode has some overscan, even then it's going to be marginal. You might have options for 1:1 4:3, but as you said you're not keen on fiddling around, I'd stick with 4:3, then cycle back once you're done.

[AnamorphicWidescreen]

UPDATE:

Thanks again for all the feedback, everyone. I may stand corrected re: these Thundarr DVD's - they may not be incorrectly flagged, as I originally thought - here's what I've noticed:

I just put in a Seinfeld S1 DVD & then later put in a Batman: The Animated Series S1 DVD in this same Blu player - I'm 100% sure these are in the correct 4:3 aspect ratio, since I've had both DVD sets for years and when I've watched them before on my older player, they both showed up as 4:3. However, on this new Sony Blu player they were stretched to 16:9.

So, as a previous poster mentioned, it appears that my new Sony Blu player stretches at least some 4:3 content to 16:9; presumably it's also doing this to my Thundarr DVD's. My previous Samsung Blu player did not do this with 4:3 content - but that was a 3 1/2 year old player (bought new in December 2012); this crapped out on me earlier this summer.

That being said, what's still puzzles me here is that when I watched The Blair Witch Project DVD on this same player, the picture was for all intents & purposes full-screen - thought it still took up more room than most full-screen images, there were still the black bars on either side of the screen.

In any case, this new Blu player is obviously treating 4:3 movies/TV shows differently than my previous Blu player. It is a hassle to have to change the aspect ration each time I watch something in 4:3, but I may have to do this....