4:3 letterbox vs. pan & scan

[FlimsyFeet]

Something I don't understand about the setup menu of my DVD player.

If you are using a 4:3 TV, you have 2 options: letterbox or pan & scan. Now, letterbox obviously gives you the whole picture with black bars to the top and bottom, and pan & scan gives you a 4:3 "frame" out of the full picture, cutting off the edges.

What I want to know is - is this "frame" always in the centre, or does it indeed "pan" to where the action is in the picture? If it does pan, how does the DVD player know which part of the picture it should be showing?

[ultimatebilly]

The encoder can store Pan-vectors in the mpeg-stream, which tell the player which part of the picture it should show...
But it isn't used, I think, because it is not sure if all players will support it correctly, and because it is too much of a hassle to produce such a stream.
MPEGRepair and Restream can do this, check this thread:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=51671&highlight=pan+mpegrepair

If you want to see the movie in the way the director intended you to, and don't want to miss a big part of the picture, then you will go for letterboxed...