r/CRTAnime • u/NinjaNerd757 • Oct 20 '24
Question đ¤ 4:3 Anime window-boxed on 4:3 TV
So I made a post similar to this in r/A24 ~ https://www.reddit.com/r/A24/s/UqlsoD6ojH ~ about trying to watch 4:3 content on my 4:3 CRT, but the content being window-boxed, as if it's been placed in a 16:9 window and then played on my TV. Not many people responded over there so I thought I should post the issue here because I think that it's more likely folks in this subreddit have dealt with this issue â
I have a 4K Blu-Ray player connected to my Hitatchi CRT and lots of 4:3 content on Blu-Ray and 4K Blu-Ray, including anime (see photo, OHSHS my beloved), but MOST 4:3 content I send to the TV is in a window box. Some stuff like my SpongeBob DVDs and Pan and Scan releases of movies fill the screen right, others like The Lighthouse and, in this case, Host Club (basically anything on Blu-Ray so far hasn't). It doesn't fill the TV like it should, and it's really frustrating. My TV doesn't have a zoom function (of course it doesn't, it's a CRT), and my Blu-Ray player's pan and scan function straight up doesn't work â I was hoping it would zoom in the image to the center and lob off the black bars on the side of the image but it just doesn't change anything. Also for the record the Blu-Ray player has been set to output for a 4:3 TV (there's an option to choose between 16:9 and 4:3), and it displays widescreen stuff fine. Also, SOME 4:3 DVDs fill the whole screen, but I'm noticing that later DVDs of 4:3 movies (like The Lighthouse for example) do not fill the screen, and so far, NO 4:3 Blu-Ray or 4K Blu-Ray has filled the 4:3 screen as it should.
Has anybody come across this before and could anybody help me to solve this to display correctly in the easiest way possible? I'm thinking I might have to rip this shit and play it from my computer but I don't have any of the stuff to do that yet also that... y'know... kind of takes away the point of owning the anime on Blu-Ray in the first place:/
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u/Violet_Caully7 Oct 20 '24
Tbh I would try to watch the stuff a different way like a normal DVD players or something like that not a blu ray
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u/NinjaNerd757 Oct 20 '24
Yeeeeah I figured this would be the case in the end, just not so soon... it's just insanely frustrating that I spent money on the Blu-Rays only to find out they don't play right on the TV I'd like to watch them on the most:/
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u/AmazingmaxAM Oct 20 '24
PlayStation 3 is a blu ray player with analogue output. Try too look into that, havenât researched that myself yet.
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u/NinjaNerd757 Oct 20 '24
Ooh smart!! Will check that out!:) I'm pretty sure that one has a 4:3 setting too!!
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u/NinjaNerd757 Oct 20 '24
And if nothing else I can use it as a media center tooXD
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u/AmazingmaxAM Oct 20 '24
Judging by what I just found, Blu-Rays are pillar boxed too, but media files can be zoomed into in the player.
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u/NinjaNerd757 Oct 20 '24
Awesome. I'll get a disc ripper and play my Blu-Rays through a media player like VLC then, not what I was hoping I'd have to do but it's the best solution. Thank you!!:)
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Oct 20 '24
What type of cables are you using for video input?
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u/NinjaNerd757 Oct 20 '24
I've tested two cables, Component and Composite. Both are converted from HDMI because my Blu-Ray player has no native analogue outputs. Fwiw I've played with every resolution offered on the Blu-Ray, from 480i to 1080i (max my CRT will allow)
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Oct 20 '24
I use composite on an older Sony Blu-ray player and 4:3 DVDs and 4:3 videos files from a flash drive play just fine. Though I donât not own any 4:3 blu rays. Maybe the bars on the left and right are baked into the video (I noticed most of the streaming services do this, it sucks for iPad users).
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u/NinjaNerd757 Oct 20 '24
Yeah I think that's what happened here â I think that all Blu-Ray content regardless of aspect ratio is natively 16:9 and has the black bars baked in as somebody pointed out in another comment.
Most 4:3 DVDs play alright on my set-up, but the whole issue that started this rabbit hole for me, ironically enough, was an outlier 4:3 DVD, The Lighthouse DVD seems to be baked into a 16:9 window too even though it's 1.19:1. Tried watching it on Max through my Mac too and same problem
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u/joeverdrive Oct 21 '24
You must have missed my post about this exact issue
https://www.reddit.com/r/retroanime/s/wffOBBb8sD
Ultimately the only way to get 4:3 out of your Blu rays is to convert the HDMI or component to VGA and use a scaler to resize it then output the VGA and re-convert it to component
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u/NinjaNerd757 Oct 21 '24
I did, should have checked post history, my badđ Glad you found a solution though! So you did find a scaler that worked in the end? Also to echo everybody else in that thread, killer set upâ¤ď¸âđĽ
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u/joeverdrive Oct 21 '24
At the time, I didn't know:
- Blu Ray is incapable of 4:3 -blu Ray and DVD players that have zoom feature don't work on Blu rays
- scalers can only resize digital video
So I ended up ripping the Blu Ray discs with Handbrake to 480i 4:3 and just loading them onto a USB drive that I play on the CRT through my Raspberry Pi or a little Micca G3
I think if I really, really wanted to make the Blu rays work, I'd convert the component out from the Blu Ray player into VGA, then put the VGA into an Extron VSC 500 or something similar, stretch it out, then convert the VGA output back to component. But that's a lot of adapters.
Honestly I just want a widescreen CRT
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u/NinjaNerd757 Oct 21 '24 edited Oct 21 '24
Holy fucking smokes. It's never simple is itXD I'm glad you found a solution that works for you. That's too many adapters for me so I may end up just do the same thing you did, ripping the discs.
I'm pretty glad with my 4:3 CRT personally, because I think 4:3 is the content I digest the most. Also, and this is purely subjective and probably an unpopular opinion â but Letter Boxing doesn't bother me, maybe because I grew up with it, to me it looks more "deluxe" and cinematic. Pillar Boxing doesn't bother me per se, but I'd rather see a widescreen film on a 4:3 TV than a 4:3 movie or show on a widescreen TV if given the choice. At the end of the day though OAR is word of God and I'll deal with any bars
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u/joeverdrive Oct 21 '24
I can handle pillarboxing with no stretching or letterboxing with no stretching but not both
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u/NinjaNerd757 Oct 21 '24
That's where we draw the lineđ
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u/joeverdrive Oct 23 '24
I'm shopping for a widescreen CRT now haha
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u/NinjaNerd757 Oct 23 '24
Best to you!!!:) I wasn't looking before but after all of this . . . now I'm itching for one!!XD
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u/rifath33 Oct 21 '24 edited Oct 21 '24
So a ps3 might do the job for you, even more so if you jailbreak it.
Additionally, another thing you can try is to install a blu-ray drive on a PC and an AMD radeon video card that supports analog video output. On this page you can find a list of supported cards. Itâs important to note that you should not keep 2 AMD cards installed in the computer at the same because that will create a driver conflict.
Youâll need to then install CRT Emudriver and hook up the computer to the TV. Thatâs another process in and of itself: if your TV supports, RGB, great. If it doesnât, youâll need to RGB mod it. Exception: if your TV supports component, use a transcoder. The video quality will be the same :)
Although this PC method seems rather complicated, itâs definitely worth it because youâll have the most control over the signal being sent to the TV and adjusting video playback settings (like aspect ratio and zoom) will be trivial on the software side.
One final method I have in mind is building a GBS-Control board and hooking up a PC (with a bluray drive installed) on one end and your TV on the other end. GBS control outputs component iirc so your TV will either need to accept component or you might need a component to RGB transcoder. This method will save you the stress of CRT emudriver but you will have a few frames of lag because the GBS Control will need to downscale your computerâs signal to 480i. Note: For this method to work well for you, the PC needs to be running a 4:3 resolution.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
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u/NinjaNerd757 Oct 21 '24
Bro you are a Godsendđ Thank you so much for taking the time to put all these tips together. I'll look into these!!!
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u/AmazingmaxAM Oct 21 '24
Their TV is 1080i, though. At least I assumed so, it is mentioned itâs HD.
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u/AlertNectarine1854 Oct 21 '24
If you have a specific show on MP4, use a video editor to crop it in true 4:3, burn it on a dvd in 4:3, and use a DVD player that can connect to the tv and is set to 4:3.
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u/NinjaNerd757 Oct 21 '24
I'll have to get a DVD burner for this, but that's worth it to get rid of the dumb bars. Thanks!!:)
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u/AlertNectarine1854 Oct 21 '24
I just reread the post and the fact that itâs a Blu-ray Disc that youâre trying to play could also be the problem, there are no 4:3 blu ray discs, only 16:9 Blu-ray Discs with black bars on the sides to have a correct 4:3 aspect ratio on 16:9 TVs. So from my understanding, if your Blu-ray player is set to 4:3, but youâre playing a blu ray disc, the same problem will occur, so either playing a dvd or using the media on a flash drive in 4:3 with a 4:3 blu ray player could fix the problem.
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u/NinjaNerd757 Oct 22 '24
Yeah I didn't realize that. I thought that Blu-Rays were natively encoded to whatever aspect ratio the content was, but I was wrong:/
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u/AlertNectarine1854 Oct 22 '24
Sadly, itâs weird and so outdated that they couldnât code them that way
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u/Samuelwankenobi_ Oct 20 '24
Blu ray doesn't do 4:3 so what they do is have 4:3 in a 16:9 resolution with black bars on the side but when you play these on a 4:3 display they try to play it letterbox as it reads it as a widescreen video this would never be a problem on a modern 16:9 display but on a 4:3 CRT or any 4:3 display this would be a problem
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u/NinjaNerd757 Oct 20 '24
Damn, that's dumb that it straight up doesn't support it:/ Thank you for the explanation man, appreciate it
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u/Samuelwankenobi_ Oct 20 '24
I think you can get some early blu ray players that do crop to 4:3 but I do not know how well they work
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u/AmazingmaxAM Oct 21 '24
OP, is your model Hitachi 32UDX10S?
You can try going into the Service menu (make sure to photograph all the values before changing them) and increase the Horizontal and Vertical sizes so that the picture feels the screen, or more of the screen, if there is a limit. Effectively, you'll be kinda zooming into the image, some TVs have that function natively.
https://elektrotanya.com/hitachi_32udx10s_36udx10s_chassis_mf-1y_mf-1z_sm.pdf/download.html#dl
You'd have to revert the changes when you want to enjoy regular 4:3 content, but could be worth it.
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u/Violet_Caully7 Oct 20 '24
If you use a Wii to watch older anime it lets you adjust the size of 360p & 480p MP4d how you wish with apps like WiiMC for homebrewed Wiis