Most Compatible Aspect Ratio for Both 16:9 and 4:3 TVs?

[internetpilot]

Okay, I have a dilemma and need some knowledgeable advice on the either/or of this decision.

My home TVs are all 4:3 regular TVs with 32-inch being the biggest. So needless to say, I've been happy with my DVD2SVCD letterboxed creations. Unfortunately, I'll probably not be looking at a 16:9 TV in my home anytime in the near future.

However, my recently purchased mobile TV (flip-down for the minivan) is 16:9 widescreen, and when I play the SVCDs in my mobile DVD player, it's annoying to see the borders across the top and bottom, no matter which of the 1/2 dozen or so TV display settings I use. Even in the best wide setting on this mini-widescreen TV, I still get about 1/2 inch borders on the top and bottom and the actual movie display is out of proportion. This complaint is more legitimate with a 7" wide screen TV than some monster-sized home model.

So I tried the anamorphic 16:9 setting with my last SVCD creation (Jurassic Park III), but that just ended up in problems on both kinds of TVs. The DVD deck in my car didn't like the 16:9 version of the SVCD at all -- the display image ends up off-centered with flickering and skipping, etc. On my home TVs, I end up with a stretched (or is it crunched?) 4:3 picture with no borders and that's all out of proportion as well. I'm not sure why my home DVD players won't put the borders on this 16:9 SVCD when I play it, but it doesn't -- even though it is set to a 16:9 widescreen in the DVD player settings. I'm also not sure why my mobile DVD player won't play the 16:9 format SVCDs when it plays other SVCDs just fine.

Thoughts? Suggestions? I'm at the point where I'll just tolerate the slight borders on the widescreen in the car (after all, I'm usually the driver and don't get to see it anyway, but the kids are whining about it making the picture smaller...sigh...kids...). But if anyone has any tips to offer about this or a better solution/compromise, I'd appreciate it.

I'm surprised to not find much if anything on this here, as I'm sure there are plenty of folks who have both 16:9 and 4:3 TVs in their house. I've found some aspect ratio questions, but no one seems interested in the compromise between two different sized TVs.

Thanks in advance.

[Jason28]

Its not so much the TV but th way that the player sends the info to the the TV. When you say that you tried 16:9 animorphic does that mean you did 16:9 with borders or without borders?

The reason why you are having these issues is that DVD players cant handle the 16:9 no borders added svcds.

If you have done 16:9 with no borders and you still got the messed up result I dont think that there is much you can do, you will have to live with the 1/2 inch border. If you havnt done 16:9 with no bordes I would try that and test the results (you can just encode 1 chapter and see what happens). You have to go the misc tab and change the level of DVD2SVCD to advanced to get the 16:9 no borders option to be there.

Let us know how it turns out.

[internetpilot]

Yeah, that's what I tried (16:9 no borders). All of my SVCDs are 16:9, I guess -- they're just 16:9 with borders to make them actually 4:3 (if I'm saying that right). So, it does look like I'm stuck with a little bit of borders in the car -- or I should say that the kids are stuck with it. Bunch-o-whiners! If I had only been so lucky to have widescreen TV in the car when I was their age!

Thanks for the info. I suspected that's the way it would turn out, but I'm not going to sacrifice my 16:9 display (albeit with borders) on the home TV just for the rather rare chance that we'll watch that movie in the car on a trip!

[Amit]

This has already been answered here many a times so I am justing going to repeat the same (just in case you are lazy seraching the forum)

You can convert your DVDs always using 4:3 (no borders added) no matter what is being selected by the D2S automatically when you click on the DISC button on the conversion tab. What you are doing is that you are encoding the 16:9 DVD as 16:9 but without the information that tells the DVD player that its a 16:9 movie.

How will this help you:
In your car when you play this CD your player won't have any problem since the CD is not saying that its 16:9 but instead sending picture as 16:9. Your Wide Screen (16:9) in the car is happy since its getting 16:9 picture and so won't put any borders etc.

In your home TV (4:3) your DVD player is again happy since its thinking its a 4:3 picture (because we didn't encode the 16:9 information) but your TV will complain since it does not like the 16:9 picture coming from the player and needs black borders to display properly. Now here your intervention is requried. Read your TV manual. On most of the newer TVs specially the bigger ones you will find in your TV menu an option to enable the 16:9 mode. In some TVs its called the CinemaScope mode etc etc. Enable this mode and now you should be able to see the picture properly.

On my Sony Wega 29 inch TV, I have an option under Menu/Setup/16:9 Enhanced Mode ON/OFF.

Hope this helps.

ENJOY
-Amit

[C0G0N3]

Yeah just encode as 4:3 (with no borders)

Then tell your DVD Player(s) to stretch the picture to 16:9.

It will look fine.

I feel you, I cannot find a DVD Player that acutually supports 16:9 SVCD's properly.

My Mintek-1600 doesn't flicker, but it squishes the image on my 4:3 TV.

[internetpilot]

I read through the forums pretty thoroughly, but didn't find anything specifically about a happy medium between the two TV aspect ratios. I found a lot of questions on one or the other ratios, but not anything on the happy medium for households with both types of TVs. Sorry if I'm making folks repeat -- I hate having to do that myself.

I am a tad confused though -- are you all telling me to set my aspect ratio in D2S as just 4:3 instead of "16:9 (encoded as 4:3 with borders)" or whatever that second 4:3-ish option is? Because when I set it to do 16:9 anamorphic, I get problems. Won't I get a scrunched display if I just tell it to do 4:3?

Okay, I guess it's time to waste an evening ripping/converting a test DVD blowing a whopping 5 cents on a couple of discs to test the results in the two DVD players, eh?

Thanks again for the advice, folks!

[Jason28]

@internetpilot

I am not to sure what you will get. I dont have a widsceen TV :(. When you are done with your tests write back here and let us know what happens.