[mkral]

OK, not sure if this is exactly the right place to post this, so feel free to move it if need be. This isn't strictly a DVD player app question, but you guys are the only electronics experts I know, so here goes:

I recently purchased a mac mini & a 42" Plasma flatpanel TV. When I run movies through the DVD player app (or a real DVD for that matter), many times I get black bars at the top & bottom of the screen. Problem is Philips says that these will cause burn in & ruin the screen. If I plug in a regular DVD player I have a choice for "16:9 expand" which seems to fill the entire screen, but if I use the mini, or a DVD player with progressive scan & using component video cables, I lose this ability. It seems like many movies, inlcuding a lot of new ones, run with these black bars, even though our TV is widescreen (16:9). On the mini, in DVD player, I can zoom in on the movie to get rid of the black bars, but I lose a lot of the picture & in places where words are up on the screen, they are always cut off.

Any ideas on how to get around this, using either the mini or a standard DVD player? Or any leads on where to ask this question, thanks,

Mark

[Thinine]

They won't cause burn in unless you leave a movie up there for weeks on end.

[MaxPower2k3]

It's because most movies (nearly all, in fact) are shot in a format wider than 16:9/HDTV. I think 16:9 was chosen as a common ground between regular 4:3 (old analog TVs) and wider film formats. The more common film formats are 1.85:1 (small black bars on the top and bottom of a 16:9 screen) and 2.35:1 (larger black bars). Like Thinine said, newer Plasmas are better at avoiding burn-in, so you shouldn't run into any problems unless everything you watch on the screen is film.

[mkral]

OK, thanks for the heads up.

[Millennium]

As the others have said, it is theoretically possible for these bars to cause burn-in, if you leave a movie paused with the TV on for several weeks. You might even be able to get it if you watch nothing but movies for several years. However, avoiding it is not hard: just watch something in a format which doesn't have those bars once in a while. Anything will do, as long as it doesn't have the bars. Even a screensaver will work, though if you choose this option use one with a white background, not a black one (technically you should do this for LCDs too, but nobody bothers to do that anymore).