Reccomend DVD player (software)

Alkers

Just recently got a new monitor. Widescreen Samsung 22" 1680*1050 iirc. I have foudn that when I am playing DVD's with WMP which I have always used, that even when I am in the "fullscreen" mode, the picture doesn't occupy the whole screen and is surrounded by black. Is this due to the resolution of DVD's or what? Anyone know of a player that will play in proper full-screen mode? Thanks

8T8

This is normal the black bars are part of the DVD. However there is also another black border which you can see the difference in the tone of the black this is WMP filling the empty space or from what I understand.

I'm not aware of a method of removing either but in MCE you can zoom and the number 3 setting often removes the WMP/MCE black border but the original borders in the DVD remain.

PowerDVD7 does not have the extra set of black borders that WMP does but the DVD ones remain of course. It also has an feature in the video/advanced menu that stretches the video to fit the screen along the horizontal plane. Well that's all it did on my notebook & was actually handy for the DVD of Pirates of the Caribbean 2 which has small black borders running down vertically at the edges of the video.

Don't know myself of any software out there that scales a DVD to full screen removing the borders (there might be).

Alkers

I don't mind the black bars that belong to the DVD. WMP has other black areas, the picture displayed hardly gets any bigger when I enter the fullscreen mode. Is that player free or do you have to pay for it?

8T8

Cyberlinks PowerDVD 7 isn't free it is a commercial piece of software but it doesn't really cost that much €40-50 depending on which version you buy. There is a demo which I suggest trying to see if it does what you want it to.

If you have something like NVIDIA's Purevideo or ATI's AVIVO as your DVD decoder and wish to keep that as the decoder you can use {the free} Media Player Classic as your playback software instead with it and override MPC's built in decoder. When playing a DVD full screen {view->full screen} right click anywhere and from the "video frame" menu select "stretch full screen" and the extra set of black borders will vanish, MPC will remember this setting for DVD's.

To make MPC the default player or show in autoplay when you insert a DVD click view->options then under player->formats tick the box for the DVD file & under Autoplay tick the box next to DVD.

To make Purevideo or AVIVO take over MPEG {DVD} decoding under internal filters\transport filters untick MPEG-2 video.

In the view->options\player section you can govern the conditions of playback by selecting always launch in full screen & exit full screen after playback etc.

Ghost Train

vlc is my favourite software player at the moment, has good crop & aspect ratio options

http://www.videolan.org/

subway

Simona1986 wrote:

I don't mind the black bars that belong to the DVD. WMP has other black areas, the picture displayed hardly gets any bigger when I enter the fullscreen mode. Is that player free or do you have to pay for it?

are you seting wmp to fullscreen (right-click on the video > fullscreen) or are you just maximising the player?

try that and it should play in fullscreen, it does on all of my machines.

as part of what 8t8 is saying i just want to add that widescreen tvs are generally in 16:9 format, while widescreen pc monitors are 16:10 so you will usually have small black borders top and bottom on widescreen video if watching on a pc

8T8

subway in Windows Media Player when you go full screen their is a small extra set of black borders they can be hard to pick out depending on the display but once you see them you tend to notice it and it gets rather distracting.

This is what it's like in full screen;
small black border
DVD black border part of film
actual film content
DVD black border part of film
small black border

This is because WMP does not stretch and fill the video to the screen and puts in a black filler but the black in tone is visible enough to distinguish from the films own black borders.

subway out of curiosity what decoder do you use ?

As eolhc mentions VLC like MPC can also strech the video full screen but I have little experience with this software, can you override the DVD decoder it uses becaues Purevideo & AVIVO are better quality decoders ?

If not then you can do this with MPC (assuming Simona1986 is using either).

subway

im currently using the decoder that comes with vista.
on my previous xp mce machines i was using purevideo
on my 4 current xp machines i just use wmp and i have never noticed this problem.

are you certain that you arent seeing the extra bit caused by the 16:9 v 16:10 aspect ratio?

8T8

Oh yeah I presume that's what it is, it's just not part of the DVD is what I was getting at & other player software is unaffected or compensates.

Are these gone in Vista do they compensate for this in the final build ?

subway

nope, windows still just runs everything at full resolution stretched horizontally.
theres no pan and scan option for removing black bars in wmp - the option is in mce vista the same as the options you mentioned above (info > zoom > 3)

Alkers

It's a lot worse than you're describing 8T8. There are bars on the left and right sides of the picture also. I am using the right-click then fullscreen option in WPM. I've attatched a screenshot showing the size of the video compared to the size of the screen. I'll give those other players a try later.
EDIT: The area in red is the edge of the video. Depending on the film, there can be also horizontal black bars running inside that area, but they show when I play the same DVD on my other computer with lesser resolution.

subway

was your previos monitor widescreen or normal screen?
judging by that image i would guess wmp thinks you dont have a widescreen monitor.

im just checing for a setting for it now

subway

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=48966

looks like your fcuked.
i just checked and because i have power dvd installed wmp uses that as dvd decoder so apaprently thats why im not getting the issue.

check the software that came with your pc, if its a dell/hp/etc it should have an oem copy of powerdvd or windvd that should work.

failing that, any of the above players mentioned should work -
media plyer classic/ video lan etc

Alkers

Previous screen wasn't widescreen. That's the exact problem I have alright. I'll have to play around with those other players. Cheers

subway

checked my settings and just to confirm we have the same -
i have under tools > performance > advanced > dvd
i have everything checked

heres a screenshot so you can see what i mean

8T8

Simona1986 what version software are you using WMP 9, 10 or 11 ?

Have you updated your display drivers and updated to the latest build of Purevideo (I'm assuming that's what you using from your sig with the NVIDIA card).

Make sure in the NVIDIA Purevideo control panel that it is set to content default.

subway

heres a screen from vista
ive no dvd decoder installed but ws works fine
the options are slightly differnet

to note, when i turned off use renderer under xp, i had the same problemn as the op

8T8

You mean the "Use video mixing renderer" that's interesting subway as it sounds like it might be driver related if it isn't working the graphics cards driver should support VMR which is what that tick box enables.

Simona1986 update display driver & then update the build of Direct-X and see what happens.

subway

yep, thats what i meant.

gonna mess around with this and install power dvd to see if it chagnes the options etc