Setting up the picture on your DVD player

Now and again we get customers emailing us with issues on their new DVD player where it isn’t giving a good enough picture quality. Firstly, we can absolutely guarantee that the picture quality from all of the DVD players we supply is excellent – if it isn’t we don’t bother stocking it…

However sometimes it is necessary to change some of the base settings of a DVD player to suit your TV. This article tries to help with initial set up if your DVD player picture isn’t absolutely perfect. The main culprit for causing picture quality degradation is the aspect ratio of your TV and the aspect ratio the DVD player is set up for. Firstly a very brief explanation of what is aspect ratio.

Aspect ratio

There are 2 main aspect ratios for home video… those being 4:3 (also known as standard ratio) and 16:9 (also known as widescreen). The original older TVs and computer monitors were always the square shaped screen which is 4:3… and most newer TVs and computer monitors are now more of a rectangle on its side shape which is 16:9. 16:9 aspect ratio gives a much wider picture, compared to the height of the picture, compared to that of standard 4:3. If you try to view 4:3 content on a 16:9 TV the content has to either be stretched to fit or to have a letter box view with black bars on either side of the picture.

Setting up your DVD player

Many DVD players come with a video setting set to “stretch to fit” or similar setting. What the player does if this is the chosen option is stretch the video content to fit your screen. This is fine if your TV aspect ratio and the video content are the same however if they aren’t and the DVD player has to stretch the content this can degrade the quality of the picture and give a very poor quality image. The resolution is very easy… go in to the SETUP menu for your DVD player using a button on your DVD remote usually labelled as “Setup”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your DVD player SETUP menu

Once you are in the SETUP menu for your DVD player you will have several sections…. the one you will want would normally be labelled as VIDEO or PICTURE. In this part of the setup menu you will have several options for adjusting the picture output by your DVD player on to your TV. Quite often we see a setting labelled as “VIEW MODE” … check what option for this is set… you may see it defaults to a setting such as “AUTO FIT”. This means the DVD player is going to stretch the image to fit your TV screen if the aspect ratios don’t match. We would suggest changing this to “Original” or a similar setting that causes the DVD player to output the video in the original aspect ratio it was filmed in. Sometimes if the image quality isn’t what you expected you can just try a few of the different settings… if it doesn’t result in an improvement set it back to the original setting and move the next option.

If something goes wrong you will usually find in the last main section of the setup menu for your DVD player a section called “MISC” and in here is invariably an option for “reset to default settings” or “factory settings”… choose this option to wipe the slate clean and return you to the original settings the DVD player came out of the factory with. These settings usually are designed to suit the majority of TVs and will work on just about every set… even if it’s not the most ideal and perfect set up for your screen.

View our full range of DVD player units by clicking the link.

Do get in touch and let the 3wisemonkeys know if you need any more information or tips!

The 3wisemonkeys team