Problem I am having with blu-ray settings.

[Ghost]

Okay, this is kind of a random problem I have. I rented a blu-ray copy of Priest and I noticed this before a few weeks ago when I watched Insidious on blu-ray also.

I'm using my PlayStation 3 to watch my movies on my TV using HDMI and my TV is about 32 inches. I noticed that these movies have black borders at the top and bottom of the screen. I didn't have this problem when I watched Avatar and I've gone into my settings and changed some things and I can't get rid of the black borders. It's an issue with the aspect ratio that I know of. If I'm correct I'm trying to get the display to a 16:9 ratio but I could be wrong.

I've also checked the settings in the menu of the movie and I don't see anything of a full screen version or a widescreen version. Do any of you know what the issue is? If it's something I can fix in my settings. Please let me know.

[F-Man]

It's not a problem. Movies are made with different aspect ratios depending on the director's preference for a wide or a tall field of view. Some movies are 1.85:1 (width is 1.85 times longer than the height) and some are 2.35:1 (those will have black bars on a widescreen TV which is 1.78:1). These are the most widely used aspect ratios today, if you watch a movie from before the 60's, the image will be 1.37:1 meaning black bars on the left and right sides. The classic "Ben-hur" is in 2.76:1 ratio.

Back in the day, they used to make "Full Screen" DVDs (and most VHS tapes were full screen by default) where they cut parts of the image to give it a 1.33:1 ratio like old TVs used to have. This ruins the effect of the scenes, sometimes splicing some actors in half or just not showing them at all. The US release of Astro Boy 2003 is like that and we know how awful that was.

[Ghost]

Oh I see, So it has nothing to do with my settings. That makes sense. That would explain why I didn't have this problem when I watched Avatar.

Thanks F-Man.

[Astro Forever]

Oh, I didn't know either! I wondered the exact same thing a few weeks ago. Thanks!

[Astro Boy2866]

If you had a very wide tv screen, you would not have the black bars, but since you don't have a giant movie screen at your place, there are going to be black bars. If you were to have the video take up the entire screen, one of two things will happen: 1. The video would be stretched vertically making the video appear tall, or 2. The video would seem to be alright but the video is actually cut down to make it fullscreen, but you lose some of the field of view on the video. So it's not your settings, it's just the movie you're watching. Like f-man said, it depends on what the director prefers wether he/she would like it to be tall or wide. If it's tall the black margin will be smaller, but if it's wide the black margins are made larger to show the entire video without losing some of the view. I don't believe they even make fullscreen movies that cuts off the view of the film anymore, but I'm not entirely sure.

[Tetsuwan Atom]

Also a verry simple thing to remember is that the only reason some movies aren't just always filling your tv is that the actual size as it was shot isn't right anymore this is verry dificult to see for the human eye but if you would play off the same thing beside each other with the difrent ratio's you would see the filling image doesn't look natural and some director's want it as it was supose to be with the stupid black bars.