[CIA]

I have a Dell 24" display hooked up to my Powermac. When I play quicktime movies in full screen (QTPro) I can show them at half, native, double, or full screen. When I play a movie in it's native rez in full screen mode it's usually a little box in the center of the screen, but the remaining display space around that movie is all black. This is usefull since my displays native res of 1920x1080 makes small QT movies look rather blocky if I blow them up to "Full Screen". Even tho it may be a smaller picture window, I like being able to play back said movies in native, or double native size. It makes for a smaller, but cleaner image.

Now in Apple's DVD player, hitting CMD-0 brings it into full screen mode. And while DVD's look good, on this display I can see the compression, and the blown up movie is a little blurry. It's made worse by the fact that I sit only a few feet away from the display. Sadly, pressing CMD-1 2 or 3 just takes it out of full screen and plops the viewer in the middle of the desktop. How can I keep DVD's in full screen yet play at native, or double native size? I want the display dark and just the movie in the center of the screen. Am I forced to use a 3rd party app?
Thanks in advance.
P.s. if it matters: latest OSX version, all updates installed... blah blah blah.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally Posted by CIA

I have a Dell 24" display hooked up to my Powermac. When I play quicktime movies in full screen (QTPro) I can show them at half, native, double, or full screen. When I play a movie in it's native rez in full screen mode it's usually a little box in the center of the screen, but the remaining display space around that movie is all black.

That sounds like a bug to me. The intended behaviour is to blow it up to full screen.

[mitchell_pgh]

What quicktime movie are you playing and what DVD are you playing?

[CIA]

I commented on the QT pro feature just as an example of what I was looking for in the DVD player App. To clarify, if you have quicktime pro, and open up a quicktime movie (any movie, it doesn't matter), and then hit Shift-CMD-F, you are presented with the options to show it at half, actual, double, or full screen size. No matter what you choose, the desktop goes dark, menu bar goes away. Then, once it is playing in full screen "mode", if you hit CMD-0, 1, 2, or 3 it will play it at whatever the movie's half rez, actual rez, double size, or full screen (respectively), and it does this with a black background blocking out the desktop. It's nice, but for movies encoded at say 320x240, blowing them up to 1,600x1,200 provides a blurry or blocky image, regardless of how good quicktime is at scaling.

Let's change gears here....
I am looking for the same ability mentioned above, but in OSX's DVD player app. There you just get a few options for diplaying the movie. CMD-1 shows it at half size, in a window, CMD-2 shows it at native rez, still in a window, & CMD-3 blows it up to as big as the display allows while preserving aspect ratio, but still it's a window with the desktop and menu bar still visible. Finally CMD-0 puts it in Full Screen, and you can't see the desktop. In CMD-0 mode you can see the menu bar only if you put the mouse at the top of the screen.
I want to be able to watch a DVD (any DVD) in, like a presentation mode, but at it's native res, or double native. So the display is black around the movie, but I don't have to watch the movie all blown up to 1,920x1,080 where I can see compression and the blur that comes when you blow something small up that big.
Get what I'm saying? I swear I remember being able to do this before, but I can't figure out how to keep the DVD player from popping the movie back into a window when I shrink it down.

Dell bashing aside, the display is great, and working with all the screen real-estate is nice, but sometimes when I want to watch something, (again, I'm sitting pretty close to the display) I don't need it all huge, I'd prefer a cleaner movie image, with everything else blacked out.

[- - e r i k - -]

Ah. Now I get it. Something to request for Apple yes. Have you tried using VLC?

[CIA]

I should try VLC, but just did a system install and need to re-install it. I just swear I remember being able to do this in the past with Apple's own DVD player. Am I missing some setting, or is the setting cryptically worded?

[TETENAL]

I think it was possible in previous versions, but it seems to be gone from DVD Player. VLC can't do it either.

[CIA]

I'm SOL?