Video Asylum

Posted by David Aiken (A) on August 09, 2006 at 00:48:01

In Reply to: you need to have the test material going posted by snkby on August 8, 2006 at 20:43:56:

I just dug out my copy of the Optimiser and ran through the tests. My player is set for 16:9 playback, as is the screen.

The 4 tests prior to 4:3 Aspect Test all display perfectly this way, as do the instructions for the circle test. Those instructions start with the following paragraph:

"This test checks the display ability of your monitor. If you have a 16:9 monitor, set it to 4:3 mode for this test."

So the instruction is to set the MONITOR to 4:3. There is no instruction to set the player to that format. Setting the screen to 4:3 produces the correct result on my screen.

This test is followed by a 16:9 Aspect Test which only produces the correct result when both screen and player are set to 16:9.

The 16:9 test starts with the following instructions:

"If you see a perfect circle while playing back this test, your DVD player is correctly set to display a 16:9 anamorphic movie.

If you have a 4:3 television and you see a tall thin oval, you must stop the DVD player and change the Aspect Ratio setting to 4:3."

So basically what they're doing is checking the TV's aspect setting with the first test and the DVD player setting with the second test. The instructions for both are quite explicit as to which device's settings need to be modified.

Try the 4:3 test with the player set to 16:9 and change the screen setting and see what I mean. I simply followed the test instructions and they appear accurate—things work as intended in this test if you simply change the screen setting for the 4:3 test.

David Aiken