Full screen mode is not full screen

Question

Brand new inspiron 6000 with 1600 x 1100 res. Very simply, when media player is in full screen mode, there is a clear inch of blackness on both left and right, and a further inch and a hlaf on top and bottom when viewing dvd's.

Clearly the picture can be stretched to fill the whole screen, but how is this done?

I dont mind if it negates quality, because if anything it will increase it, but I wouldnt mind utalizing my full screen, especially if multiple people are trying to view it.

Thank you.

jaminus · Answer

I'm assuming your display is 1680x1050 pixels, which is a wide 16:10 aspect ratio.

First, understand that most DVDs are widescreen - but there are two types of widescreen. 16:9 and 2.35:1 cinematic. Since your notebook panel is 16:10, when you are watching a widescreen video, there should be small black bars on the top and bottom of the screen (regardless of whether your video is 16:9 or 2.35:1). The reason the video doesn't fill the entire display is because stretching a 16:9 (or 2.35:1) image to fit your display would result in a distorted image. Windows Media Player, along with most media players, automatically displays video in the proper aspect ratio while maximizing the screen area occupied by the video.

So a 16:9 DVD would occupy all 1680 pixels horizontally, but only 945 lines, or 90% of the 1050 vertical lines, thus you will see about 50 black lines on top and bottom.

Also 4:3 videos, as in standard NTSC TV and many DVDs or other video files, will have black bars on the left and right. This is normal, for aspect ratio preservation.

I understand that when multiple people are viewing a video on a laptop display, it is best for viewing area to be as great as possible, but unfortunately this cannot always be the case due to aspect ratios.

I'm sure you could find software on the internet capable of playing video files and streching them to fill your display, but it is highly recommended to leave video in its native aspect ratio to avoid distortion. It's not simply a matter of quality degradation (aka resizing) - the images on the screen would look fatter than they ought to, or skinnier, depending on whether you are stretching a 4:3 or 16:9 image.

bkn6136 · Answer

Well, as the above poster mentioned, you should expect to have black bars above and below the image regardless of what you are viewing. However, the bars on the left and right of the image should not be there! I had the same problem with my I9300 when I first recieved it and tried to watch a movie in WMP. I never resolved the issue, and instead I use PowerDVD to watch movies now. This resolved the side bar issue. Try switching up your media player and seeing if that improves things. I'm sure there's a way to fix the problem within WMP, but I've messed with the settings for some time myself and still had no luck, so there's no advice I can really offer you in that respect.

Good luck!

Brian

Message Edited by bkn6136 on 04-24-200605:53 PM

Talelf · Answer

Yeah, I can understand there being black bars on either the top and bottom, or left and right, but not both. Surely it wouldnt be conpramizing visual affect by enlarging the video to its full capacity.
Thanks for the help.
Any further help would be appreciated though.

jaminus · Answer

Oh so when watching video there are black bars on both the top/bottom and left/right?  I see, thats certainly undesirable, and it can occur for various reasons.   Some DVDs (video) have black bars on all sides encoded onto the disk. Windows Media Player 10 leaves the black bars intact, and I haven't figured out how to eliminate them.  I'm sure other 3rd party DVD playing software would work, though I have not searched for any other myself.    Make sure your display adapter is set to the native resolution of your laptop's LCD display.

Talelf · Answer

yep, nice and wide. I'll live without it, but if I want about 10 people to see it, it'll be a cram. Cheers

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Full screen mode is not full screen

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