Hello all. I posted a little while back about being in the market for a widescreen monitor. I took the plunge and now have a Sceptre 20.1 Widescreen monitor. Nice!! I just want to make sure of some stuff, though: A long time ago when I was young and immature (....when was that....yup, I think it was last week), I used to think that movies shown in widescreen were a pain in the butt, what with those "black bars" at the top & bottom of the screen. Like many people, I though I was missing out on part of the picture. I soon came to find out, though, that it was the "Pan & Scan" versions of films (Full Screen) that was cutting out part of the picture (a cool web site that shows some great samples of this is http://www.widescreen.org/widescree... Now I know there are many different "types" of widescreens, depending on HOW a movie was filmed. There is the 1.75:1, 1.85:1, and 2.35:1. Many DVD movies will say on the box "Enhanced for 16:9 Widescreen TV's". Now unless I haven't got something configured correctly, I though most of the "black bars" would disappear when I played a widescreen movie on this monitor. Will there always be a little bit of a black bar no matter what? Is there some "tweak" that I don't know about yet that could help me minimize the black bars? I even checked some television shows that are broadcast in HD widescreen (I have an ATI All-In-Wonder graphics card), but there is still some black bar at top and bottom of the screen. Anybody have some expertise in the widescreen arena? Thanks, Pez

If the original format doesn't equal 16/9 ratio then the aspect ratio will be changed in order to fill the screen. How this works depends on circuitry and/or software. On my 22" Samsung 16/9 display if I set the resolution to something other than a 16/9 ratio, the resulting picture will be streched to fit the entire screen. Not sure if this is a function of the display or my ATI 9600 AIW. On my 58" rear projection 16/9 TV there are different settings like Full, Natural Wide, Etc. These cause different effects. For instance, when watching something with a ticker at the bottom with some of the choices the ticker is at least partially buried so I assume the TV is simply enlarging the picture and the result is some loss at the top & bottom. It also can display the standard 4/3 but with bars at the sides. So In closing I would ask if you installed the software that came with your display? You may also need to update the version of Catalyst software for your ATI card and check to see what resolution you are running.

Hi OtheHill; thanks for responding. I also have an ATI All-In-Wonder card; I used to have the 9600 too! I now have the X800 XT. And, I always keep my video drivers up-to-date, and as a matter of fact, I just downloaded the latest Catalyst drivers and multimedia center. I also have the latest drivers for my display monitor. I sure appreciate your input, so let me get some further things straight, here: It seems you also have a Widescreen display monitor (it's an LCD flat-screen, too, right?). I know you don't HAVE to, but I thought it was best to set and leave these types of monitors in their "native" resolution; mine happens to be 1680 x 1050. I know I can set it at other resolutions, but it's supposed to look "best" in its native. Do you change yours from its native? You say "16:9", but I don't actually SEE a "16:9" choice in the Settings tab on the Display Properties. Were you speaking literally? If so, can you tell me how to "find" this "16:9" setting?. As a side note, about 4 years or so ago, we tried a Widescreen television by Hitachi. Back then, not enough television stations were broadcasting in HD yet, so many of the stations being broadcast in "standard" received on our set looked "bad", because the sets' high lines of resolution was "filling in the gaps" that a standard broadcast sends, so the picture actually looked "fuzzy", almost blurry; not clear at all. I also remember this Hitachi set had a feature where you could "stretch" a picture to make the black bars "disappear", but then, in so doing, you'd be sacrificing some of the picture because it would be being cut off when it was "stretched". Anyway, OtheHill, could you tell me precisely what it is you do to your settings that you're able to watch a Widescreen movie (on your DVD ROM drive I presume) to get rid of the black bars on the top and bottom of the screen? I'd certainly appreciate it. Thanks, Pez

OK, first off, 1680 x 1050 is 16/9 ratio. Second, I don't watch movies on my computer so I can't help you there. Third, you are correct about the native resolution but you can use others without harming the display. Right now I am using 1280x768 in Win98se because the Catalyst driver version that supports Win98se doen't give me the 1680x1050 option. My display doesn't look that bad. When I use Win2000 (dual boot) I am able to use the native resolution. I suggest you try different resolutions with you DVDs and see ifyou can rid yourself of the bars.