PanScan and Letterbox on 4:3 TV

[Fotis_Greece]

Hi there all. Just bought a Sony NS730P dvd player (pal version here in Greece) and connected it with SCART (RGB selection) with my 25" flat 4:3 TV.
I selected the Letterbox in the player's setup menu and everything is fine.
The problem is when i select PanScan in the players menu the movie dimensions still remain the same on my TV. I expected it to cut a bit on both sides and expand vertically but nothing happens. In other words whether I choose Letterbox or PanScan the movie remains the same. I tried it with many discs and I am a bit confused,
Why does this happen? Is there something wrong with my dvd player?
Thanks in advance

[manono]

Hi-

There's nothing wrong with your player. The Pan and Scan option has never really been implemented by the Studios for their DVDs.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by manono
Hi-

There's nothing wrong with your player. The Pan and Scan option has never really been implemented by the Studios for their DVDs.

Agreed!

In fact you've just reminded me that my brother-in-law borrowed a test DVD of mine (a long tme ago) that had this function... The only one I've got!

Cheers

[Fotis_Greece]

Thanks for your replies. I thought since I can watch PanScan in my PC with software players I could also watch like this with set top ones.

[genpix]

I seen few anamorphic PAL DVDs where P&S feature was implemented.
Never saw it on NTSC DVDs.
coincidence?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by genpix
I seen few anamorphic PAL DVDs where P&S feature was implemented.
Never saw it on NTSC DVDs.
coincidence?

Thanks for that info.

I'll have to check this out with some of my more recent PAL DVD's!

Cheers

[manono]

Hi-

I thought since I can watch PanScan in my PC with software players...

You sure it's true Pan And Scan, or just some cropping from the right and left sides?

From DVD Demystified:

For automatic pan & scan mode, the anamorphic video is unsqueezed to 16:9 and the sides are cropped off so that a portion of the image is shown at full height on a 4:3 screen by following a center of interest offset encoded in the video stream according to the preferences of those who transferred the film to video. The pan & scan "window" is 75% of the full width, which reduces the horizontal pixels from 720 to 540. The pan & scan window can only travel laterally. This does not duplicate a true pan & scan process in which the window can also travel up and down and zoom in and out. Auto pan & scan has three strikes against it: 1) it doesn't provide the same artistic control as studio pan & scan, 2) there is a loss of detail when the picture is scaled up, and 3) equipment for recording picture shift information is not widely available. Therefore, no anamorphic movies have been released with auto pan & scan enabled, although some discs use the pan & scan feature in menus so that the same menu video can be used in both widescreen and 4:3 mode. In order to present a quality full-screen picture to the vast majority of TV viewers, yet still provide the best experience for widescreen owners, some DVD producers choose to put two versions on a single disc: 4:3 studio pan & scan and 16:9 anamorphic.