problem with DVD zoom on Zombi 2 shriek show

[saveyourservant]

After viewing the screen shots posted on these forums, I noticed that when I watch the Zombi 2 DVD I am losing a significant amount of information on both sides. In other words, in the Olga Karlotta shower sequence, I am not seeing a full frontal - her reflection in the mirror is cut in half. Now I don't really care about this particular scene, but it started making me wonder what was going on. I am assuming that I am losing information on all DVDs, not just this one.

I recently bought a new Panasonic 34" widescreen TV (which I absolutely adore btw) and the problem was still apparent, so it must be the DVD player itself.

If I set the 'zoom' function on the DVD remote to 1/2x (rather than the default 1x), then I can see the whole image, and I was shocked to see how much image I'm actually losing. I would estimate between 5 and 10% of the image is being cropped because of the zoom function. I have a JVC S502 DVD player, which some of you may recognize as a model that can be professionally modded to be region free. I'm wondering if the problem is somehow caused by the region being set to '0' rather than region '1'.

Does anyone know of a way to actually get into the DVD player firmware and reduce the default zoom setting slightly. I'm certain it is the DVD player because it did the exact same thing on my old TV.

It's really not a big deal, I suppose, but I hate knowing that I'm losing a little of the composition of the image.

Any suggestions would be great.

[Crystal Plumage]

Probably you DVD player settings are set to 4:3 Pan & Scan.

[saveyourservant]

No, they are set to 16:9. I tried messing with those options as well.

[dwatts]

There are similar settings on the TV too (well, there is with mine). Is the TV set to 16:9?

[X-human]

Welcome to the wonderful world of Overscan. The four corners of the video image are cropped off in order to fill the entire screen, about %5-10 depending on the TV. Every TV does this. The only way around it is to buy a DVD player with Zoom Out (like you've got) or find a TV with zoom out, which you'd probably have to get from the media industry and those can get pretty expensive (for no good reason).

[bigdaddyhorse]

Or if you have a Sony tv you can find the secret code online and go calibrate your set properly. At first I thought my 16:9 mode was the only thing wrong, so I fixed that. Then I started messing with other settings and noticed how much the original settings had the picture blown up so reduced it to cut out most of the overscan. You do have to have some OS or else the tv will die quickly from what I heard. I'd say I dropped mine from 10% to about 2%.
It was kinda funny seeing my screen reduced to about 13" in the 32" screen while I was messing with it. :D

[dwatts]

Or buy a projector ;)

[Silent Noize]

Could it be because the Shriek Show DVD is not flagged for 3/2 pulldown?

[saveyourservant]

Yeah, i've tried messing with the zoom settings on the TV as well, but there seems to be no happy medium. I haven't heard the term overscan before, but i'll check on Panasonic's site and see if there is a way around it. Still seems like it could be corrected on the DVD player as well somehow. Thanks for the info.

[saveyourservant]

Hey I fixed it! The problem was in fact the overscan on the TV. Just so you guys know, if you look around online, you can probably find how to enter Serviceman Mode on your TV and make these kind of adjustments. BEWARE - make sure you know what you're adjusting and pay attention to the default settings or you can do serious screwing up of your picture. I cannot stress this enough.

There is a remote control code to get in this mode on my Panasonic and I was able to easily adjust the width of the picture so that I can now see Olga's body as Fulci intended. Needless to say, this is critical to the enjoyment of the film...

[X-human]

Good article on Overscan:
http://www.mastersofcinema.org/reviews/03lookingbeyond.htm

I lost my bookmark of it but a search on Yahoo! grabed it for me.

[Crystal Plumage]

Hey I fixed it! The problem was in fact the overscan on the TV. Just so you guys know, if you look around online, you can probably find how to enter Serviceman Mode on your TV and make these kind of adjustments. BEWARE - make sure you know what you're adjusting and pay attention to the default settings or you can do serious screwing up of your picture. I cannot stress this enough.

There is a remote control code to get in this mode on my Panasonic and I was able to easily adjust the width of the picture so that I can now see Olga's body as Fulci intended. Needless to say, this is critical to the enjoyment of the film...Doesn't the picture look stretched/squeezed now?Or did you adjust height too?

[JW77]

This has always bugged the fuck out of me, that televisions don't allow you to easily adjust the vertical and horizontal overscan. It's been standard on computer monitors for years.

I remember I first discovered "overscan" when I was running my VCR through the composite inputs on the monitor I used for my Commodore 128, and when I fiddled with the controls, I was really quite shocked just how much image I was missing on my TV. Just watching a news broadcast (I was piping the broadcast signal into my monitor through the VCR out jacks) and the little time/temp bug in the corner of the TV was a bout a quarter of the way into my monitor!

[evileye]

Any recommendations for players with a zoom OUT function?
Region free/PAL convertable? :glasses:

[Crystal Plumage]

Any recommendations for players with a zoom OUT function?
Region free/PAL convertable? :glasses:I read something about Malata.Not sure about region free/PAL though.

[saveyourservant]

No the image did not looked stretched. The problem is next movie I watched was Blade Runner Director's Cut. The edges of the film are so jagged that I had to get back into to repair mode of the TV and take it back to normal. Unless you want to mess with it every time you watch it, I wouldn't bother.