Page 1 of Forgive the newbie question!

Lo all,
I`ve just got my hands on a Wharfedale 750s which saves me having to port over from the PC, but .... I can`t work out the widescreen theory. I`ve a a mitsubishi 28" widescreen TV.

From the PC, some DVDs (R1) would play full screen and others in letterbox with a very small border, but almost every wide screen DVD I play from the wharfedale is in letterbox format with huge borders. Effectively, the film is viewed in the center third of the screen. I`ve set the player up for 16,9 - 4,3 (PS), 4,3 (LB) and Auto, but it`s the same story. Output has been swapped with Auto, PAL60, PAL60R and NTSC but no change.

I can get full screen by pressing zoom once, but that defeats the purpose.

This is the newbie question ... is the above normal? ... I assumed a widescreen tv would allow me to view in widescreen (almost), rather than having a 14" viewing area with the information from the sides thrown in for free.

You can now proceed to cast stones. :)

Thanks in advance,
Lep

That definitely doesn`t sound normal, I`ll leave it to someone else who may know why its doing it to explain whats going on. ;-)

What I`ve found on my 32" Phillips Widescreeen is that there are two modes that I need to use depending on the widescreen film being watched.

"Widescreen" mode works for most films but sometimes, and I guess it must be something to do with the films because Ive seen the same on my old Matsui player, this causes the symptoms you are seeing, i.e it looks like the film has been letterboxed really badly.

To get around this I choose "16x9" which puts the film back to the correct aspect ratio with the normal small black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.

You need to make sure you keep the player set to 16x9 to take advantage of anamorphic widescreen.

If you have a different TV mode as opposed to Widescreen or Zoom that resembles something like my "16x9" I would suggest trying that. For info there doesnt seem to be anyway of telling which films behave differently to your normal 1.85/2.35:1 films and require this "16x9" mode.

Good luck.....

Thanks Lumpy,
I`ve tried the 16.9 mode and am still having the problem. When watching the DVDs ported from my PC, I can set the player to output to "Wide" mode and end up with a border of an inch or two at the top or bottom. The problem at the moment is that from the Wharfedale, the border is taking up a third of the screen at both top and bottom and I`m left with a very wide but very short viewing area across the middle. I just can`t figure it out. I`ll have to give Wharfey a call and see if they can shed some light.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Lep