Hi there,

I am new here and hoping that I can chip in my 2cents.

I have a quick question regarding some old Chinese dvds. Those dvds' screen sizes are labeled as Letter Box. I watch them on my 16x9 tv but don't know which setting is the best for viewing. When I try to use full screen (16x9), the image stretches to fit the screen (fat and short image). When I try to use normal (4x3), the screen is so small with four black bars boxing the image. When I use panorama, the image seems normal in the centre, but it stretches on both sides (which I know it is intended by the manufacturer). When I try zoom, I cannot view the subtitles.

I just wonder anyone with experiences on this. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!!

Unfortunately you've correctly identified the problem but there's not much you can do by way of a solution. It was only relatively recently that Chinese DVD manufacturers started making their DVDs anamorphic (enhanced for widescreen TVs). In theory the correct setting for watching the discs is "zoom", but on many or most DVDs the subtitles are not positioned to support this.

Some TVs offer a 'subtitle zoom' that will shift the image up, or let you manually squash it a bit to fit the subtitles on. I used to have a Malata N996 DVD player that was extremely unreliable but did have some fantastic 'expert' features, including the ability to scale the picture on a dvd without scaling the subtitles. This was a life-saver for a lot of HK dvds, though one of the Malata's little quirks was that it would mess up the timings of subtitles on some discs, displaying them too late and/or removing them too early. Since I'm a fast subtitle reader I could deal with this unless it was really severe, but most of the friends I tried to watch films with couldn't handle it.

Unfortunately they stopped making/selling the Malata a while ago and I've never seen another dvd player with this feature. Really there's no reason every dvd player shouldn't let you move the subtitles manually, but those of us that like to watch foreign cinema aren't generally given much thought when they make the things...

So, unfortunately I don't have any solution to your problem. Do try experimenting with the remote buttons or the menus of your TV to see if it lets you shift/squash the image when it's in 'zoom' mode though.

Thank you very much for your quick reply!! Your information is indeed helpful!!