50PFL7956 with older aspect ratio movies

[PeteNeville]

Hi,

I have been trying to find an answer to question "Is it possible to play an ordinary DVD movie with aspect ratio 4:3 (ie. 1.33:1) so that the picture is not distorted?" The reason I am writing to this forum is that I have been getting quite diverse answers from "Of course" by a retail salesperson to an amazing "Our TVs have not been supporting 4:3 aspect ratio any more for a couple of years now" by the Philips support center.

The operations manual is not completely unambiguous in this one either.

So, has anyone been able to play succesfully (ie. without distortions, leaving black "pillarbox" areas on the leftmost and rightmost areas of the screen, and using the whole vertical extent of the screen) legacy DVD movies like "Casablanca" or "Brief Encounter"? I would appreciate any information on experiences.

[PeteNeville]

Returning to this question.

I managend to find a patient salesman who was ready use some time to explore the capabilities. The system we tested was not the 50" version though, but presumably the 58" version should work similarly...

To be able to view a 4:3 movie with this set requires indeed using the "Auto zoom" option. On top of that, you need also to find suitable settings in the DVD player as well. In the test case this meant changing "16:9 widescreen" option to "16:9" option which, slightly irritatingly, produced the undistorted 4:3 aspect ratio on the screen.

So, for my part, this matter is closed in a satisfactory manner now.