Blu-Ray issues? Help please. =]?

Question

I just got a PS3. Now, I'm just having a small issue with playing blu-ray movies. When I watch a blu-ray movie, the picture doesn't fill the entire screen. But when I watch a regular DVD on my PS3, it fills most of the screen. (The movies appear as if I'm watching them on a full screen television.) How do I fix this so that the movies fill up my tv screen? (I have a 46 inch widescreen Sharp Aquos tv, if that make a difference.)

Answer 1

All movies are filmed in "Widescreen" which deals with the aspect ratio of the film and camera used.  Popular film aspect ratios are: 1.78:1, 1.85:1 and 2.39:1, where the first number represents the width of the image and the second the height of the image.  All new plasma and LCD televisions have 16:9 aspect ratio screens or 1.78:1.  This means that 1.85:1 may have small black bars along the top and bottom.  These black bars will only become more noticeable when a film with an aspect ratio of 2.39:1 is played.  A movie like Ben-Hur would have even larger black bars, as it was filmed with an aspect ratio of 2.76:1, making an image that was almost three times wides than it is tall!  

So it could be the DVD you are playing was filmed in 1.85:1 (as you said that it fills "most of the screen") and the Blu-ray disc movie was filmed at 2.39:1 (larger black bars).  This also means that the DVD version of that Blu-ray movie you describe would fit the same area on your tv.

Answer 2

It has no problems...

My spiderman movie that came with it displays full screen...

Yesterday i bought I am Legend and it displayd in widescreen...

it depends on the movie...

(both are bluray)

Answer 3

The Letterbox issues is not because of Blu-ray nor the PS3. The reason that some movies don't fill up the whole screen is because the movies were originally filmed with an aspect ratio (1.85:1 or 2.35:1) that's different than the aspect ratio of a widescreen tv (1.78:1/16:9) and a standard tv (4:3). If you were to remove the bars and watch the movie in "full screen", it would mean that you wouldn't be able see the whole picture or that the picture would be distorted. It's entirely normal that the picture doesn't fill up the whole screen.