4:3 fullscreen on 16:9 TV?

[tominator]

Hi
I have a lot of material with a 640x480 resolution but when I play it on my Widescreen TV (16:9) it plays in fullscreen. The funny thing is that the Aspect ratio doesnt seem strange at all. It actually looks very good.

When I play 4:3-DVDs on the same TV I get them in fullscreen too.

How can this happen?

[HeadBangeR77]

The answer is: "PanScan".
Either your TV-set or your standalone player cuts the displayed video from beneath and from above, so that you can see it in fullscreen.
I've never watched any 4:3 MPEG-2 /MPEG-4 material on my 16:9 TV, but almost all broadcast TV-stations are 4:3 here. If I don't want to have black bars from both sides displayed, and I want to keep the proper AR, I enable zooming (so it's called at least on my Panasonic TV).

[setarip_old]

Hi!

Most, if not all, widescreen TVs (and standalone DVD players) have multiple display settings that allow for properly proportioned playback of different resolutions...