Page 1 of Anamorphic widescreen setup?

Is anamorphic picture presentation automatic if it is quoted on the dvd box?, as many of the titles I have say they are anamorphic but are not full screen on my Thompson widescreen TV. I am running a Sony NS300 machine scarted (not a full number pin scart lead) to the TV into AV1. The dvd player is set to 16:9. Whilst the TV will not let me adjust the zoom on the AV channels as per normal viewing.

The worst offender was Galaxy Quest which says anamorphic but was no better than 2.0:1. Is it my machine/TV combo or the disk/packaging being incorrect?

Many thanks

Make sure....

1. The TV is set to 16:9.
2. The DVD player is set to 16:9.

Discs which have an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 are widescreen and will fill the whole of the screen, however, some widescreen DVDs have a ratio of 2.35:1 which is still widescreen but shows black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, this is so that you get the full picture.

Galaxy Quest does have a ratio of 2.35:1 so if you are seeing black bars at the top and bottom of the screen this is normal.

Does this help?
Adam.

This item was edited on Monday, 13th January 2003, 10:08

Many thanks for the help, just one more query then.

Whats the difference between 2:35:1 and 2:35:1 Anamorphic widescreen?

Ta

Darren

Fear not, help is at hand (not by me..)
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/
Great explanation. even worth downloading in pdf format (about 6MB I seem to remember) `cos it links and moves pages within the document very well that way.
Adam`s point about 2.35:1 films still having black borders is nothing to do with Anamorphic transfer - that`s just because they`re at a wider ratio. There`s a really good bit in the link too about why go widescreen at all. Amazing some of the stuff you miss with 4:3..

Ste