Playing 4:3 Ratio shows like DS9 and Voyager on new Smart TVs

[Damian]

So here's a question I can't seem to find any resolution too. I have a new ONN Smart TV and for the life of me I can't get it to play my DVDs in the correct 4:3 Ratio. It stretches them to fill the screen. That means, of course, whenever I watch my DS9 or Voyager DVDs they're distorted and I can't stand it. I've tried everything, even trying through my Blu Ray player to see if that fixes it but no luck (even though it plays any Blu Rays, like TNG, correctly). I'm a bit of a purest and prefer to see the shows in their original format.

Does anyone know a way to fix this? The option is not available on my TV it appears. None of the aspect ratio choices include 4:3.

 

[Orac]

I had this problem once, a setting on the dvd player fixed it for me.

 

[Christopher]

Are you using an HDMI input or an RCA input? I have an old VHS player (actually a VHS/DVD dubbing deck, but the DVD half stopped working) that shows the correct 4:3 aspect ratio when I watch through the RCA input, but when I tried hooking it up through HDMI, it stretched it out to widescreen, and I couldn't fix it even using my TV's aspect ratio setting menu.

For what it's worth, my Blu-Ray player shows 4:3 discs in the correct ratio, so maybe the issue is with your player somehow.

 

[James Cole]

So here's a question I can't seem to find any resolution too. I have a new ONN Smart TV and for the life of me I can't get it to play my DVDs in the correct 4:3 Ratio. It stretches them to fill the screen. That means, of course, whenever I watch my DS9 or Voyager DVDs they're distorted and I can't stand it. I've tried everything, even trying through my Blu Ray player to see if that fixes it but no luck (even though it plays any Blu Rays, like TNG, correctly). I'm a bit of a purest and prefer to see the shows in their original format.

Does anyone know a way to fix this? The option is not available on my TV it appears. None of the aspect ratio choices include 4:3.

What model Blu-ray player do you have? Normally pillar boxing is an available setting on a player.

What resolution are you outputting from the Blu-ray player? 480i, 1080i, 1080p?

 

[Tosk]

And on top of what others have said, the fix may be "hiding" behind some oddly worded setting. Some disc players will refer to aspect ratio, some will refer to letterboxing, etc.

Most will be under the main heading of screen settings but even that's not guaranteed.

 

[BillJ]

I have my original Xbox connected to a new Toshiba via an HDMI adapter. I just went into display settings and choose widescreen.

Using a Blu-ray player, that option may not be available. Due to HDCP. Might have to get a DVD player depending on the TV.

 

[Damian]

Are you using an HDMI input or an RCA input? I have an old VHS player (actually a VHS/DVD dubbing deck, but the DVD half stopped working) that shows the correct 4:3 aspect ratio when I watch through the RCA input, but when I tried hooking it up through HDMI, it stretched it out to widescreen, and I couldn't fix it even using my TV's aspect ratio setting menu.

For what it's worth, my Blu-Ray player shows 4:3 discs in the correct ratio, so maybe the issue is with your player somehow.

What model Blu-ray player do you have? Normally pillar boxing is an available setting on a player.

What resolution are you outputting from the Blu-ray player? 480i, 1080i, 1080p?

I have my original Xbox connected to a new Toshiba via an HDMI adapter. I just went into display settings and choose widescreen.

Using a Blu-ray player, that option may not be available. Due to HDCP. Might have to get a DVD player depending on the TV.

I actually sent an email to the ONN Roku TV manufacturer and they simply said 4:3 was not available as an option. I don't get it. I can't imagine I'm the only one that doesn't like watching older shows stretched to fit the screen so that everyone looks like sideways coneheads (not to mention on a special effects heavy show like Star Trek shows, it's annoying that everything looks distorted).

I have a Sony Blu-Ray player and I've tried everything I can find to adjust it. Now I have the original series on Blu-Ray and it does play that in the correct format, I'm guessing because that's how it's coded and Blu-Rays have more advanced coding. And on streaming older shows/movies are in the correct format.

I do have a Magnavox DVD player, it's a bit of an older player and I have that plugged via RCA jacks. It actually doesn't have HDMI inputs. I've gone into the DVD player settings to change that to 4:3 but no dice. It doesn't appear to actually change anything. I think the settings are designed for an older SDTV.

I've asked Google like 5 different ways and it hasn't helped. It either tells me the instructions on changing the ratio (like yeah, I know HOW to change it, the problem is 4:3 isn't even listed as an option, and one time it gave me listings for 43 inch TV's ).

But it really shouldn't even be an issue. 4:3 should just be an option on the TV. Why would they eliminate it? It seems so stupid. There are a lot of old shows/movies that were made that way that aren't avalable on Blu-Ray, just DVD. I love watching older Hitchcock movies that were filmed that way before VistaVision was created. I don't want to see them stretched out either. Ugh.

Do I have any other options that I haven't investigated? Would a newer DVD player do the trick? Is there some adapter for DVD's that would fix the issue? I haven't had any luck with finding that out either.

 

[johnnybear]

It's a nightmare out there for us old TV addicts as the manufacturers can't understand why we would want to watch an old television series or film especially in the 4:3 ratio. I should imagine I'll get the same trouble too myself in the future and I hate new TV shows and only watch the old.
JB

 

[Tosk]

I have a Sony Blu-Ray player

See if it has these options.

TV Type - Set to 16x9
Screen Format - Set to Normal
DVD Aspect Ratio - Set to Letterbox

 

[Damian]

It's a nightmare out there for us old TV addicts as the manufacturers can't understand why we would want to watch an old television series or film especially in the 4:3 ratio. I should imagine I'll get the same trouble too myself in the future and I hate new TV shows and only watch the old.
JB

Yeah I agree. I do like newer shows and movies too, and it's great to watch them in widescreen over the last 20+ years since HDTV's took off. But until now you could always watch older shows the 'right' way too.

I have to imagine this is an issue for gamers who still play older video games too. They can be even more passionate about technology so I can't believe they're not squawking about it.

And I honestly don't understand what it even 'costs' manufacturers to leave that option available. This is just software, a setting. It's not some expensive peace of hardware they need to install.

And sadly I don't see Paramount releasing DS9 or Voyager on Blu-Ray. That would fix the issue from the show's end as my Blu-Rays do play in the correct ratio. I guess because the way DVD's are coded my Blu-Ray player stretches those out.

 

[James Cole]

I have a Sony Blu-Ray player and I've tried everything I can find to adjust it. Now I have the original series on Blu-Ray and it does play that in the correct format, I'm guessing because that's how it's coded and Blu-Rays have more advanced coding. And on streaming older shows/movies are in the correct format.

Which model?

 

[Damian]

See if it has these options.

TV Type - Set to 16x9
Screen Format - Set to Normal
DVD Aspect Ratio - Set to Letterbox

My man. You and something @James Cole noted pointed me in the right direction and I figured out a workaround.

Basically I went to the "setup" menu in my Blu-Ray player. Long story short I found an option to switch my player to a 480i or 480p output and then I tried a Voyager DVD in the player and that fixed the problem. I used the 480p because that was clearer. And the audio was still surround sound so it didn't affect that at all thankfully.

It's kind of a pain that I'll have to change the settings back to 1080 when watching Blu-Rays (and I can still use my DVD player for shows/movies that are already in widescreen). But I'll happily deal with that if I can watch shows in their original format.

Thanks guys and thank all of you for your help and advice.

 

[Christopher]

I actually sent an email to the ONN Roku TV manufacturer and they simply said 4:3 was not available as an option. I don't get it. I can't imagine I'm the only one that doesn't like watching older shows stretched to fit the screen so that everyone looks like sideways coneheads (not to mention on a special effects heavy show like Star Trek shows, it's annoying that everything looks distorted).

Oh, absolutely. I can't stand it. But I once complained to an acquaintance about their TV stretching out the image, and they didn't know what I was talking about. I guess some people don't notice the distortion or don't care, but for me it's unacceptable. Discontinuing support for 4:3 is unconscionable. Countless older movies and shows were made to be in that format, and they should be seen the way they were made to be seen.

A weird case: I recently started rewatching the Dirty Pair anime on Crunchyroll (or watching it in Japanese for the first time), and after the first couple of episodes it sank in that the characters looked chubbier than I remembered. Using an erasable white grease pen to mark off where the image edges were on the frame of my TV, and comparing it to where the edges fell on a 4:3 show, I determined that they were showing Dirty Pair in a format that was about 10% wider than it should be, 4.4:3 instead of 4:3. I found that PlutoTV has a different release of it in the right aspect ratio, so I switched to watching there, even though watching Pluto means I have to put up with long commercial breaks and intermittently nonfunctional fastforwarding. That 10% makes a lot of difference to me. (I wrote Crunchyroll to complain about it, but never got a response.)

I do have a Magnavox DVD player, it's a bit of an older player and I have that plugged via RCA jacks. It actually doesn't have HDMI inputs. I've gone into the DVD player settings to change that to 4:3 but no dice. It doesn't appear to actually change anything. I think the settings are designed for an older SDTV.

I was asking whether your input into the smart TV was HDMI or RCA, i.e. your output from the disc player. But it sounds like you've fixed the problem, so never mind.

 

[BillJ]

I actually sent an email to the ONN Roku TV manufacturer and they simply said 4:3 was not available as an option.

Seems odd. Have you done any footwork on Google with the model number? We had a TCL TV that was a discount model that had the screen ratio settings.

 

[David cgc]

I have a Sony Blu-Ray player and I've tried everything I can find to adjust it. Now I have the original series on Blu-Ray and it does play that in the correct format, I'm guessing because that's how it's coded and Blu-Rays have more advanced coding. And on streaming older shows/movies are in the correct format.

It's actually a difference in the way DVDs and Blu-Rays are made. On DVDs, the video stream is always normal 4x3 SD, 720x480 pixels (SDTV pixels are taller than they are wide, so that's why it's not 640x480). They had a future-proofing "anamorphic" feature, though, where a video that wasn't 4x3 could get more resolution by being resized to 720x480, and then stretched back into the correct shape on playback. It wouldn't get you to full HD, but it'd get you a little big of extra resolution that would normally be wasted on black bars.

Blu-Ray discs don't do that. Videos that are narrower than 16x9, like TOS and TNG, or wider, like the Star Trek movies, have the black bars as part of the actual image, they aren't added after playback. I guess because DVDs came out after the HD transition was planned, so it was known that they could be played on HDTVs (and computers) that had greater-than-SD resolution, so cramming more detail in was a consideration, but for one reason or another, similarly enhancing Blu-Rays for 4K TVs and computers wasn't a concern. I personally wouldn't have minded if TOS-R and TNG-R had an effective display resolution of 1920 x 1440 instead of 1440 x 1080, but no one asked me.

 

[Damian]

Oh, absolutely. I can't stand it. But I once complained to an acquaintance about their TV stretching out the image, and they didn't know what I was talking about. I guess some people don't notice the distortion or don't care, but for me it's unacceptable. Discontinuing support for 4:3 is unconscionable. Countless older movies and shows were made to be in that format, and they should be seen the way they were made to be seen.

My ex wife was like that. "I don't see the difference." Are you kidding me? She didn't even want to add the HD option to cable when we had cable. She was fine with the screen being stretched out in SD for widescreen shows. Like how can you not see a difference lol? Now, of course, HD is automatically included for the most part.

But I've always been big on watching shows/movies as originally presented. In general I get peeved when they colorize old B/W shows and movies. One of the few exceptions I did make was the remastered original series. I'm glad it's still an option on the Blu-Rays to watch it as originally presented (unlike Star Wars which seems to like to pretend the original versions never existed). But I actually did enjoy the updated effects in that case and you could tell they tried to respect the original intent of who made the original episodes as much as possible when updating the effects.

But I really don't understand why 4:3 is being eliminated in a lot of new TV's as an option. I could maybe understand it if it were something that required some expensive peace of hardware or something. But as far as I understand it this would require little or no cost to the manufactures.

I'm glad I found a workaround using my Blu-Ray player at least. I have Paramount+ but why watch DS9/Voyager with commercials if I have the DVD's (or have to pay extra for a commercial free Paramount+).

Now all that I have left is I have 4 Hitchcock films on VHS ( I know) in a box set that weren't part of the various DVD box sets I got over the years that are still being stretched. Hmm. I don't think there's anyway to fix that issue. At the time I got them they were unavailable on DVD/Blu-Ray. I don't know why, other than 3 were produced by Selznick and the 4th, Notorious! started as a Selznick production before he sold all the rights to Hitchcock to produce. They were 4:3 of course since that was the 1940s. Maybe it's time to see if they have since been released on disc. Those are the only movies I have left still on VHS.

Though...I did keep my old 1st generation Star Trek VHS tapes I got in the 1980s for nostalgia reasons. I managed to collect the entire series on VHS. And I have the first 5 Star Trek films on first generation VHS that I kept too. I still remember for my birthday one year back then getting the first 3 Star Trek films on VHS at the same time. A great gift considering back then they cost 29.95 to 39.95 for a single movie on VHS--which was actually pretty cheap for the time as some movies could be close to 100.00 on VHS. Amusing considering you can buy some entire TV series on DVD now for under 100.00.

Well, in any event I digress. I'm just happy I found a workaround to watch DS9/Voyager in it's original format (as well as other 4:3 movies/shows I have on DVD).

 

[Damian]

Seems odd. Have you done any footwork on Google with the model number? We had a TCL TV that was a discount model that had the screen ratio settings.

Yeah I tried that and tried rephrasing my question about 5 different ways. The closest I got was a Reddit question someone posted about it and they basically got the same response I did from ONN, that they no longer support 4:3 resolution. Nobody there offered any resolution though. I'm not a huge Reddit fan but I was getting desperate LOL.

I actually got the most help here. I really haven't been on TrekBBS the last 2 or 3 years for different reasons (nothing to do with TrekBBS or anything like that) and then it was like a light went off and I thought I should post a question here. I know a lot of Trek fans are pretty Tech savvy and maybe someone here would have some ideas. And voila, a couple comments here got me on the right path and I was thankfully able to find a workaround.