Panasonic TH-50PX50U 50-Inch Flat-Panel HD-Ready Plasma TV
For Dean Mimmack, Plasma Stretched Image Problem Fix:
Dean Mimmack wrote that he couldn't get the Panasonic plasma to properly display widescreen movies without distortion (stretching, fat-face etc).    The Panasonic does indeed properly display widescreen movies (of course it does!).  Unfortunately it's clear Dean had a set-up problem that he wasn't able to diagnose.  The problem he describes leads me to believe the problem was with the set-up of his DVD player.    A DVD player must be \\"told\\" what type - that is what shape/size - display you are using.  Because the world is filled with standard 4:3 televisions (the \\"squarish\\" screens that have been the standard up until now), and with the advent of 16:9 displays (that's the rectangular dimensions of the new wide-screen dispalys), every DVD player has an output option for either a 4:3 TV or 16:9 widescreen TV.     Many DVD players are defaulted to the 4:3 mode (because most people own a 4:3 TV).  That tells the DVD player to send the appropriately formatted signal for a 4:3 without distortion.  But if you send that signal to a widescreen display, that's where these troubles occur.  In the 4:3 mode, the DVD player creates a 4:3 image (squarish) in the middle of the plasma, with black bars on the sides (wich the DVD player considers unused space, since it is viewing the widescreen display merely as a squarish 4:3 display).      This, I gurantee, is what was happening with Dean Mimmack's set-up.  My guess is that this was the Panasonic plasma was the first wide-screen display he was using with that DVD player.  So the DVD player had been properly outputting a 4:3 image to his former 4:3 TV, but was still set to the 4:3 default when he hooked up his new Widescreen TV.  Hence the distortion.    Now, as I said the DVD player sending a 4:3 image to the widescreen display will send it to the middle portion of the display, with black bars on the side.  Many people don't with this mismatch between their DVD player and Widescreen set never even see these black bars.  Why? Becausemany widescreen displays have an automatic default action to fill the screen with whatever signal they encounter.  So the plasma detects a 4:3 image and automatically goes into one of it's \\"zoom\\" or \\"stretch\\" modes to make it fill the TV screen.  So you don't see the black bars, but what you get is the cropped off or stretched-looking images.  (A funny thing is so many people get used to this so fast they no longer see their TV image as stretched.  It's amazing how many friend's homes I've come into watch DVDs, and they've had this problem for a year and never even noticed it).    The solution:  Go into your DVD player's \\"set-up\\" mode and you will find an option for setting your screen type: 4:3 or 16:9.  If you are using a widescreen display, choose the 16:9 option.  Viola.  Fixed.    I feel sorry that Dean didn't have someone to help him out, or that he didn't seek better help.  Too bad.  I hope he still has the plasma and eventually figured things out.    Rich H.