Geometry Issue With Sony 3lcd Bravia Rear-pro?

[hired goon]

G'day,

I've just set up my Sony 50" 3LCD rear-pro TV. Mostly beaut, but there's one niggling problem that is annoying me. I guess it is a geometry issue where an object moving from one side of the screen to the other is not shown at a constant size. At the extremes, the object seems to be elongated.

For example, there's a scene in the kid's flick "Barnyward" where a barn door is square in the middle of the screen, but as the scene pans to the right, the barn door becomes rectangular as it moves leftwards. There's also another scene where the characters fly on a surboard through the air from right side of the screen to the centre, and the shape "squares" up as it moves.

Another example: some scenes in the beginning of "Fellowship Of The Ring" which pan around Mt Doom, seem to show the mountain growing larger as it moves away from the centre of the screen. It is almost vertigo-inducing at times.

It's also obvious on scrolling tickers on news broadcasts. The words are slightly elongated at the edges of the screen, but no in the centre.

This is kinda annoying and I'm wondering what is causing it. I'm using component outputs from my SD DVD player and SD set top box. Is it a geometry issue? An LCD lag issue? Something else?

--Geoff

[Owen]

Sounds like you have some 4:3 stretch mode enabled somewhere.

Have you got your DVD player and STB set to 16:9 mode?

[davep]

I remember a relatives Sony CRT had a special stretch function on the TV which stretched a 4:3 to 16:9 by using a variable stretch across the width, i.e. edges stretch more than centre, so persons in the middle of screen look normal, but as panning occurs, its almost a weird curving effect. If this is what you're thinking of, scan the manual, i'm sure it'll be in there somewhere, and as Owen said, make sure the DVD player is set to 16:9 within it's own settings menu.

[hired goon]

G'day,

I remember a relatives Sony CRT had a special stretch function on the TV which stretched a 4:3 to 16:9 by using a variable stretch across the width, i.e. edges stretch more than centre, so persons in the middle of screen look normal, but as panning occurs, its almost a weird curving effect.

Yes -- that is exactly the effect.

It's a monitor configuration issue. I ran the video tests on the THX Optimizer on "Finding Nemo" and the Aspect Ratio test for 16:9 monitor showed an oval rather than a circle, ie, as shown in Figure 16 in the following: http://www.thx.com/home/dvd/optimizer/aspectRatio.html, which diagnoses the problem as "DVD player set to 16:9, monitor set to 4:3".

Checking my DVD player and Topfield STB, both have video output set to 16:9. I then went to the "screen mode" menu of the Sony. The default setting is "Wide Zoom", which is described as "enlarges the centre portion of the picture". Sounds suspiciously like my problem. I then selected "Normal", which is described as "displays the 4:3 picture in its original size". Aha! I thought -- surely a "Normal" setting will show everything correctly. But, alas, this also treats a 16:9 source as 4:3

I had to choose "Full" mode, described as "stretches the 4:3 picture horizontally", to get the THX 16:9 aspect ratio test to show a perfect circle, and to remove the aspect issues I was having previously. And it also displays 4:3 sources correctly.

So, I must confess I dunno why setting a non-default 4:3 mode for a 16:9 display fixes this issue. I hope I'm not missing out on any 16:9 content by selecting a "Full" mode. Do other Sony 3LCD users select this setting too?

--Geoff

[AndrewWilliams]

My stupid Austar set-top box doesn't have widescreen signalling and because the Sony TVs default to 'Normal' every time you switch to the input, I had to program my remote with a macro that switches the mode to 'Full' every time I select that input.