Display is wierd when playing movies.

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u8myrice

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I have a 20.1" Viewsonic WS monitor. Everytime I play a movie, it doesn't stretch out all the way, but it's boxed in the middle. Is there anyway to fix this? I'm running it on an FX5200. Here's a screenshot.

 
I run into the same problem with mine. I gather your problem is with Windows Media Player? If so, try out other media players (easily Google'd) and see if the effect stays. I've had no problem with Cyberlink's PowerDVD, for example. Actually... I've had no problems with any media player outside of WMP.

Hope that helps.
 
Yeah, its probably the player you're using, not monitor.

What is likely happening is that if say the movie has black bars (say a 2.35:1 ratio movie), then when you run it fullscreen, the 4:3 (or maybe its 16:9) image (in other words the 2.35:1 image of the movie, with the black bars on it) hits the top and bottom of the screen, and so WMP puts black bars on the sides. At least some movies seem to be this way, where they've actually put the black bars into the image, instead of just letting your display do it.

Does this happen with all movies, or just certain ones? Check the aspect ratio of it before hand.

Oh, and no offense, but I can't tell anything from that picture, its just all black. Er, nevermind, I can see the slightly different black between the bars and the movie. Maybe get a capture of it with something actually there might help people understand whats going on a little better.
 
darkswordsman17 said:
What is likely happening is that if say the movie has black bars (say a 2.35:1 ratio movie), then when you run it fullscreen, the 4:3 (or maybe its 16:9) image (in other words the 2.35:1 image of the movie, with the black bars on it) hits the top and bottom of the screen, and so WMP puts black bars on the sides. At least some movies seem to be this way, where they've actually put the black bars into the image, instead of just letting your display do it.
Click to expand...

Exactamundo.

I recently ran into this problem and there is a thread in this very forum entailing my trials in trobulations.

What it comes down to is you need a player intelligent enough to upscale non-anamorphic video so that the video frame fills the screen horizontally.

Non anamorphic widescreen movies are basically 4:3 (non widescreen) video frame with the widescreen movie shrunk down to fit on the frame and letterboxing added (top and bottom black bars. When this video is scaled up 1:1 to fullscreen on a widescreen monitor the top and bottom edges of the video frame end up touching the top and bottom edges of the screen first, and the sides of the video frame don't touch the sides of the screen.

To watch these movies on a PC with a widescreen monitor you need a video player that is intelligent enough to stretch a non-anamophic widescreen movie by an additional 33% both horizontally and vertically so that the widescreen video fills the screen, and the useless letterboxing that's included in the video frame is 'cut off' for viewing. Windows Media Player does not do this or have any facility for doing this. You need a better and more powerful player like PowerDVD or WinDVD to accomplish this task.


With truely anamorphic DVDs this isn't a problem and WMP will usually play them just fine and stretch them horizontally to fill the screen properly.
 
http://gregl.net/videophile/anamorphic.htm

This site will give a better explanation on the differences between Anamorphic and Non Anamorphic DVDs.

In the case of our widescreen monitors and using a simple player like Windows Media Player, anamorphic DVDs are great because they will usually scale to fullscreen without much fuss. (Note I said USUALLY, Windows Media Player and any directshow player in general can be really finicky sometimes).
 
Blue Falcon said:
The Lord of the Rings Extended DVDs are all 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
Click to expand...
wmp does the box thing playing that movie on my ws monitor.
 
Gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up, but here is also another mystery. I recently changed my system from the one to my sig, to the HTPC I'm using. When I was on my gaming PC (X800XL, DVI) I could play WS with no problems (like the one I have right now). Right now I'm on FX5200, VGA, I have that black bars problem.

Could it be that DVI helped solve the black bar issues on my gaming PC? Might it be that my FX5200 lack the abilities of the X800XL? Enlighten me. =]
 
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