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I guess I am confused, because I don't see any cropping when my LCD is displaying cable programs. In fact, I often see video junk at the sides of the screen, especially on SD channels. This led me to believe that the cropping I see with DVDs is due to the player and not the TV.
It sounds like the zoom/stretch modes on the TV could be configured differently for your DVD player and cable inputs.
Another possibility is that your cable STB could be set to output everything at 720p or 1080i. If that's the case, then the STB may be pillarboxing the SD channels, without doing any cropping on the sides of the image. IOW, the STB is more in control of what you see on the SD channels when it's set to output everything in HD.
With the 480i/p input from your DVD player though, the TV controls what you see. And the TV will probably try to overscan (or slightly crop) the image, whether it's displaying a 16:9 widescreen DVD or pillarboxing a 4:3 fullscreen DVD. Without knowing all the exact details of your setup, it's hard to say.
Bill's suggestion of a calibration disc might be worth considering. In addition to GetGray, there are other options, such as DVE and AVIA. In lieu of this, there's also the THX Optimizer included in the extras on many THX-mastered DVDs, such as the Star Wars discs, which has a couple aspect ratio tests that may also give a better idea what's going on. The 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratio THX Optimizer tests have two bounding boxes surrounding the circles. The inner/smaller box is the "safe-title" area, while the outer box is "safe-action". If you can see both boxes on your TVs, then you're doing pretty well. However, it would not be unusual for the outer box to be cropped on some TVs (especially SDTVs) by the overscan. The border around the safe-action area is about 5% on all sides of the image, while the safe-title area excludes about 10% on all sides.
Make sure the player is configured appropriately for each display as well. Here are 3 typical scenarios for a standard progressive player (HDMI upconverting players work a little different)...
1) If the player is connected to a 16:9 HDTV (such as the VX32L), set the SCREEN SETUP/TV TYPE to 16:9, and control the aspect of 4:3 content using the different stretch/zoom modes on the HDTV.
2) If the player is connected to a newer 4:3 480i CRT (SDTV) with a 16:9 V-compression feature (ie it vertically compresses the raster when encountering 16:9 content), you'll most likely want the TV TYPE set to 16:9 as well.
3) If the player is connected to an older 4:3 480i CRT
without the 16:9 V-compression feature, then you'll most likely want the TV TYPE set to one of the 4:3 modes (unless you like squished images). With the 4:3 LETTERBOX mode, the player will automatically scale 16:9 anamorphic widescreen DVDs to the correct aspect ratio by adding (or increasing) the black bars on the top and bottom of the image. With the 4:3 PAN & SCAN mode, the player will
attempt to crop off the sides of 16:9 widescreen DVDs rather than adding/increasing black bars on top/bottom. Most 16:9 DVDs will not permit this cropping however, and simply revert to letterboxed display.
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It seems absurd though that a digital TV would crop information from a 480p source.
Absurd maybe, but usually true.