Another Issue Has Popped Up: Non-Anamorphic DVDs on the Panny '10A...

[DJ Scotty]

Here is something ELSE I noted regarding the behavior of the Panasonic '10A Blu-ray player....

Why is it that certain NON ANAMORPHIC DVDs in my collection are automatically detected by this machine, and stretched -- automatically -- to fill the screen better, while some are ignored?

In other words, when I load ARMAGEDDON, which has no 16X9 enhancement, the player automatically stretches the film's image so the 2.35:1 picture looks CORRECT on my screen, with the small letterboxing on top and bottom -- it automatically does this without me needing to zoom or stretch or anything, as I used to have to. Now, I loaded MENACE II SOCIETY, which is also non anamorphic, and the player won't auto-adjust the image for the non-anamorphic picture; it just sits in its small frame on the screen, and I need to go into the TV's wide modes and play with the zoom, stretch, etc, which end up looking HORRENDOUS, as this is the shittiest DVD transfer I have ever seen anyway....

Why is this happening, and does anyone else with this model experience this? Is it normal for this player to auto adjust some non anamorphic discs and ignore other ones?

[bluseminole]

I have never experience this, but I only have one non-anamorphic DVD (fullscreen Johnny English), which the player automatically stretches to fill 16x9 but then the image itself is stretched out, so no letterboxing. I am not certain if this can even be done, but perhaps the discs that get auto-formatted by the player have some sort of flag in them that will identify themselves as nonanamorphic discs to a DVD player (or Blu player) that has the capability to read that flag, and then the player can crop/stretch/format them. if this is possible, then some discs may be encoded with such a flag and others not encoded with the flag, and then those without said flag would be indistinguishable from anamorphic content to the player, which would then spit the image out in 16x9, resulting in the horribly stretched mess of a picture.

Somebody, please correct me if I am wrong. This is just a theory.

[DJ Scotty]

Originally Posted by bluseminole

I have never experience this, but I only have one non-anamorphic DVD (fullscreen Johnny English), which the player automatically stretches to fill 16x9 but then the image itself is stretched out, so no letterboxing. I am not certain if this can even be done, but perhaps the discs that get auto-formatted by the player have some sort of flag in them that will identify themselves as nonanamorphic discs to a DVD player (or Blu player) that has the capability to read that flag, and then the player can crop/stretch/format them. if this is possible, then some discs may be encoded with such a flag and others not encoded with the flag, and then those without said flag would be indistinguishable from anamorphic content to the player, which would then spit the image out in 16x9, resulting in the horribly stretched mess of a picture.

Somebody, please correct me if I am wrong. This is just a theory.

Thanks Bluse,

Most of what you say here makes sense; I have the Panasonic set to "16:9 FULL" mode so full screen discs fill the screen by stretching the image a bit, and thats not the problem....the issue is with non-anamorphic WIDESCREEN DVDs, which sometimes are detected by this player and stretched to fill better, WITH the proper letterboxing, and some are ignored, forcing me to go into the TV's menu and mess with the zoom, etc; when this player does the auto stretch for the non anamorphic discs, such as on ARMAGEDDON, I am not getting a horribly distorted, stretched "mess" at all: it just stretches the widescreen image so that the 2.35:1 frame looks RIGHT on the screen, with the properly-sized letterbox bars...

I just want to know WHY the machine is deciding to auto-detect some of these non anamorphic discs and ignore other ones; it must be some kind of flag, like you're talking about, but my other DVD players didnt do this; just this Blu ray deck....