[NDBounce]

I just bought the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire DVD (Widescreen). It plays and looks fine on my TV/DVD player. However, on the Mac I noticed something really weird. At the top and bottom of the letterbox area, there is some bleeding for lack of a better word. Basicly the letterbox does not give a solid straight edge at the top and bottom of my screen. Rather there is a small portion where bleeding takes place (maybe about 20-50 pixels) between the balck box and the actual viewable area. Has this happened to anyone else?

I would show a screenshot but apparently Grab does not work during DVD playback. I am not certain what the issue happens to be. Please let me know if you have similar experiences. For the record, I notice this on both my laptop screen, and my external monitor, as well as with my X-Box hooked up to the external monitor.

My set up is as follows: Powerbook 1.5Ghz, 128MB Vram, OS 10.4.5, 1GB RAM. External Dell 2405 monitor connected via DVI. X-Box connected to monitor via Component Video, DVD player connected to monitor via RCA. None of these provide a pircture nearly as good as the TV (is that to be expected), but the DVD player has a solid leterbox area whereas the X-Box and Powerbook make it fuzzy. I imagine that has something to do with computer decoding vs. DVD player decoding, but may be wrong.

Any insight is greatly appreciated.

Peace,

O
B unce!

[jamil5454]

Check the DVD menus for options on changing the appearance.

[Apfhex]

I haven't seen that on any wisescreen DVD's on my Mac. If the video on the DVD truly is widescreen, then the image could not (seemingly) bleed into the black letterbox areas since the video would end there, and the DVD player would be displaying the black in the empty space.

If you play the movie in a window (instead of full screen) does it appear in a widescreen window with no black anywhere?

Also, VLC lets you take screenshots of DVDs.

[NDBounce]

Originally Posted by Apfhex

I haven't seen that on any wisescreen DVD's on my Mac. If the video on the DVD truly is widescreen, then the image could not (seemingly) bleed into the black letterbox areas since the video would end there, and the DVD player would be displaying the black in the empty space.

If you play the movie in a window (instead of full screen) does it appear in a widescreen window with no black anywhere?

Also, VLC lets you take screenshots of DVDs.

I took a screenshot with VLC (thanks for the tip). Unfortunately I don't have a web server, so I don't know how to add the image. Can anyone help me.

Also, I noticed that on the PB screen these issues are harder to see than on the Dell monitor, but they are present (i.e. when I have the jpeg screen shot on the Dell, I can clearly see the issue to which I am referring, when it is on the PB screen, I have to be looking for it...however in movie mode it is annoying on both b/c it moves with the movie).

Interesting enough, I just realized that the viewing angle also has an effect as to how pronounced these areas are...I wonder if it may just be a matter of monitor calibration...

[min_max9000]

Fuzzy? It won't play on my 15-in iMac at all. The drive spits it out. This is the first commercial dvd that won't play on my nearly 4-year-old SuperDrive. Other dvds still play fine except those I make myself on DVD-R media that is x4 or faster.