Denon 3910 4:3 picture streaching problem!  

squeeze mode on the 3910 setup. Not automatic.

It will not do it all the time you will have to turn it off and on.

You have to go through the menu. Of course if you have a good programmable remote (like a Pronto) you can code up a macro (which emulates the key stokes).. or change the aspect ratio on your display if possible.

The letter-boxed widescreen DVDs are tough ones to deal with. You will need a specialized zoom function in DVD player. Your projector will lock in full mode in 720p or 1080i mode as most other TVs.

mtrx,

With my Sammy DLP I can zoom in on "letterbox'd " widescreen DVD's and they look like they are 16:9 format with a very slight chop off all around, very minor almost = to standard TV overscan. But that just the Sammy doing its thing. I dont have a 3910 but I have a 2910. I never use the squeeze mode of the DVD player. I just use the wideTV (16:9), 4:3 and zoom modes of the Sammy to do the ratio thing since I can control it via the TV remote without having to go into the DVD player's menu. Sorry I dont think there is a method to have the 3910/2910 do auto ratio of all contents. My older Panni RP91 and F65 can do the auto sizing tho.

Tinker,

I suspect your Sammy DLP will not allow you to zoom or change aspect ratio if you feed it HD signals (720p or 1080i). For 480p, all TVs (except some old Philips TV) can do these tricks.

Greetings,

The reason that you can not adjust the aspect ratio control on your HS-20 is that you are feeding it a 720p signal. The Sony will not allow adjustment of the AR when fed a 720p or 1080i signal. You can adjust it via DVI when you feed it a 480p/576p signal though. I also have the Sony and I change the format to 480/576p when viewing 4:3 letterboxed DVD's. This allows me to set the AR to ZOOM mode on the Sony. There is really no discernible difference in the quality of the picture with 4:3 letterboxed DVD's viewed in either 720p/1080i/480p/576p IMO.


Regards,

With all sources I can select at least 16:9 (Wide TV) and 4:3 with my HLP6163. I can play HD on 4:3 but the pic is compressed at the sides and everybody looks like their on a diet...:D But no zoom with 720p/1080i/HD. The TV doesnt only lock to 16:9 with those sources, I can still select 4:3.

correction: no zoom with 480p/720p/1080i, zoom on the Sammy will only work with 480i.

Nope, if you use component, you're only getting 480p or 480i. These players will not upscale over component out.

Progressive can be either 480p or 720p or anything ends with p. You will not get 720p out from component from this player, period.

Greetings,

MTRX, Fox is right. Nothing more than 480p/480i via component outs.



Regards,

mtrx,
Due to industry pressure, DVD manufacturers avoid sending anything higher than 480p out of the analog video outputs (such as Component) because those connections offer no copy protection. 720p and 1080i resolutions will only issue from the digital video outputs (HDMI or DVI) on DVD players. Keep in mind that the data on the DVD itself is only 480i, so anything higher sent out by the DVD player is created algorithmically from that 480i data.

This is distinct from cable or satellite HDTV boxes which usually WILL allow the higher resolutions to go out their Component outputs. The industry is not thrilled with that, but there are so many HDTV sets with only Component inputs out there that the industry has to live with it since otherwise Component TV owners wouldn't see any gain from paying for HDTV.
--Bob

By the way, there *ARE* DVD players out there which will automatically switch what they send out to a wide screen TV according to whether the DVD is issuing data in conventional 4:3 or wide screen 16:9 format. They do this by putting "pillar boxes" on either side of the 4:3 image to flesh it out to wide screen.

This is most definitely "not a good thing" if the player is sending out a 480i or 480p signal to the wide screen TV because the pillar boxes take up too much of the available resolution leaving less for the 4:3 image in the middle of the screen. So typically you would only WANT this if you are using a digital connection from your DVD player and the DVD player is generating a 720P or 1080i signal upscaled from the 480i data which is on the DVD itself. The extra resolution in the generated, upscaled signal allows the DVD player to insert the pillar boxes without degrading the data coming off the DVD which sits snugly in between the boxes with plenty of leftover resolution.

For example, the Pioneer Elite 59avi does this out of the HDMI output in it's "HDMI 16:9 Compressed" mode. Using this setup, the 59avi automatically switches what it sends to a wide screen TV between normal 16:9 and pillar boxed 4:3 according to what's coming off the DVD, even changing scene by scene if necessary. But you'll be much happier using this if you only use it when the HDMI output is set to 720p or 1080i resolution. At 480i or 480p resolution the pillar boxed 4:3 images will be degraded due to the resolution consumed by the pillar boxes themselves.
--Bob

If it is standard DVD, it's 480i because it is the standard. There are some WMV-9 HD discs that have real HD on a DVD disc but those require a Windows XP PC to play them.

You can capture your video in HD and edit them in HD. But it eventually has to be converted to 480i in final step for DVD otherwise no DVD player will be able to play them. All the film-based movie DVDs are technically captured in HD as films have much higher resolution than even 1080i video.

About DVD players automatically switch between 4:3 and 16:9 and even zoom in 4:3 letter-boxed video, almost all major brand DVD players can do that, in 480i or 480p. It's called ID-1 flag and the DVD player does not really squeeze the picture, it is your TV that squeezes or expands the picture based on the ID-1 flag in the component video signal that DVD players send out. We only encounter this problem when using upconverting DVD players on HD signals because majority of the TVs lock in 16:9 full mode for HD signals.

There's no such thing as a high definition DVD yet -- perhaps next year. What you are reading is marketing hype. They may have used high def equipment to digitize the data (in fact 1080p is fairly common for professional equipment so this really is just hype as opposed to an important difference between studios) but by the time the data actually gets put onto the DVD it is only 480i.

The most common REAL quality difference in DVD's has to do not with the resolution, but the degree of compression the producer used in an effort to cram too much stuff onto each disc. Over compression damages the image, but some producers don't care because the "extras" on the DVD sell more DVD's than what they lose by sending out crappy images -- particularly given that most buyers don't have great TVs anyway.

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The differences you are seeing between Component and DVI output are likely due to one of the following:

1) Your display's basic white/black/colors/sharpness levels happen to be set better for your Component input than for your DVI input. Note in particular that it is almost never the case that the SAME level settings will be correct for both inputs. Separately calibrate for each combination of source device and cabling.

2) The Denon 3910 as originally shipped is known to have problems with colors on the DVI output. This is fixed by a simple firmware upgrade available from Denon technical support for home installation. Your unit may not have that upgrade applied yet.

3) The Denon 3910 is known to exhibit the "macroblocking bug" on certain displays when used in Component 480p and one high resolution of the digital output -- I forget whether it is 720p or 1080i that is supposed to have the problem. Thus a Component 480i image or a digital image at the other resolution will look better with some movies due to the lack of improperly emphasized macroblocking noise on those displays. You may have a display which makes the bug visible. If so, and if you are using your Component connection at 480i, that will make Component look better than DVI at the wrong resolution.

4) The way you have configured your DVI player output and display input may not be allowing the proper passing of "Blacker than Black" data which can cause artifacts in the image when the display processes the image (as for example to scale it) without the benefit of the extra headroom offered by that data. If your Component setting is properly passing that data when the DVI is not, then that too will make Component look better.
--Bob

Avia is an excellent tool for you to calibrate your display to your DVD player over either the Component or HDMI/DVI connections. If you haven't used a calibration DVD before it can be a bit daunting, but pay careful attention to the narration, have patience, and don't be afraid to experiment. You should expect that you'll need to refine your use of Avia and even adjust some settings by eye as you gain experience. Some displays, such as plasmas, can be quite finicky about getting the levels right. Even a small difference can make a significant, visible change from an OK image to a truly great image.

Note that the Avia narration for setting white levels with the Contrast control is heavily biased towards users or CRT-based displays. There's a brief comment about how to do it right for digital displays -- using the moving white bars -- that you should pay attention to if you have a plasma.

Search this forum and the plasma forum and you'll find a variety of threads on how to become better at using Avia or Digital Video Essentials (DVE) for calibrating your display.
--Bob

Yes, you need to calibrate for each combination of source device and display input that you intend to use. You may discover that some inputs or some source devices work well with a single set of settings, but you can't KNOW until you check.

The problem of course is that using something like Avia is only going to work to calibrate a DVD player through some display input. So what do you do for the inputs that are going to have something else connected?

A professional calibrator will use signal generators -- for instance a generator that puts out an HDTV signal that can be fed into your HDTV receiver to calibrate that receiver into your display. But you don't have that.

Most people start by calibrating their DVD player connected the way they intend to use it and then use the resulting movie images to train their eye as to what a calibrate image LOOKS LIKE. Meanwhile they temporarily hook up their DVD player to the other inputs and use it to get a candidate set of calibration levels for each other input. This helps make sure any "torch mode" stuff is turned off in the display for that input. However, whether those levels are useful with any other device connected into that input depends on how close that device is to the DVD player in the levels it generates. You can get your devices closer by setting them all to the same sort of Black Level (the lighter 7.5 IRE setting or the darker 0 IRE setting for what gets sent out when the source content wants "Black") and by setting all of your source devices to the manufacturer's defaults for whatever the manufacturer describes as the picture mode which does the LEAST to the source images.

But in the final analysis, since you can't easily get calibration test images on screen from your other devices, you have to tweak the levels for those other devices BY EYE -- constantly referring back to what your calibrated DVD player shows when playing movies as your gold standard of the quality you are trying to match.

In the plasma forum, there's a thread called the "steaming rat" thread which talks about adjusting calibration by eye and the sorts of things you might look for when trying to decide what to tweak next. Specifically he's talking about making your DVD images look better than what you achieved with your calibration DVD, but the same technique applies to doing eyeball correction of levels for any source device.
--Bob

To add to what Bob stated yesterday...once your eyes get adjusted to a properly calibrated display, you can pick out an improper display very easily. For example, my kids messed with my settings on my TV and within 30 seconds of watching the TV I noticed that it didn't look "right"...my wife thought I was crazy. Low and behold, when I went into the setup menu of my TV, sure enough the brightness was lowered by 2 (48 from 50) and my color was off by +3 (50 to 53). My display has been calibrated using Milori Colorfacts and my eyes are very used to that image...I notice even a minor change. Also, when I go into an electronics store, I can see convergence errors very easily now where 2 years ago I had no chance to see them because I didn't know what to look for. One last point...there isn't one display in an electronics store that will be even remotely calibrated correctly. Once your eyes are trained...it is easy to see.

Dave