CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

mistressdomino · Joined: 16 Oct 2008 Posts: 1

I am having letter boxing problems with PS3 in 720p. I'm getting black bars at the top and bottom of screen on most blue ray movies, but the previews and menu screen are showing in 16x9. How do can I adjust the apsect ratio? Is this a set up issue? i'm running a crt projector through a hd fury. Thanks!! Jodi

ecrabb · Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 7:10 am Post subject:

Welcome to the forum, Jodi!

You do understand that most movies are shot on film in 1.85 and 2.40 aspect ratios... and that both of those are wider than 16:9 (1.78:1), and will therefore display with small (1.85) or large (2.40) black bars?

If that's what you're talking about, it's normal and there's nothing wrong. To see the movies without any black bars on your 16:9 screen would have to mean you had cropped the image and would miss a good chunk of the original composition - just to fill your 16:9 screen.

Here's a good article about aspect ratios:
http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/764

Cheers,
SC

**kal** · Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 1:37 pm Post subject:

SC is exactly right. Give the article a read - it's a good one.

Movies are like paintings: They come in all shapes and sizes. The problem is that your TV is one shape only, so to fit the wide variety of movies onto your TV, you will sometimes see black bars on the sides or top & bottom.

"Pan and Scan" versions of some movies are available that CUT OFF parts of the movie to make it fit on a 'regular' 4x3 TV. To many people however (most of us movie lovers here) that's exactly like cutting off part of a painting to make it fit into a frame you already have. Why would you want to lose part of the image?

Kal