black bars/aspect ratio on playback

[Starhorsepax]

Since my standalone DVD player went bad I've been using the PC and VLC for all my watching. For Christmas someone gave me an old '80s TV show which is behaving a tad erratic and wondered if anyone had any advice.

Here is the deal: MOST of the episodes play with the screen going top to bottom on the TV with the black bars only on the sides. This is what I expect on the old shows filmed for a box TV on my big screen widescreen TV. However a few refuse to do this and are shrinking so the border is all around. I don't know the exact terminology here but I fiddled with aspect ratio's trying to adjust height and so far all I got was it to stretch wide instead.

Does anyone have any suggestions what else I can try to get it to at least fill it to top and bottom? As I said the side bars are fine, I just want it as big as it will go and maintain it's 'box' shape.

[unidan]

Hi, You can change the aspect ratio either by pressing the <A> key or video->aspect ratio in the menu.

[Starhorsepax]

That is what I tried. But none of the settings adjusted ONLY the height without doing the stretch to full width thing.It should just take the picture to the top and bottom of the screen since the show was designed for the old box CRT TVs. It shouldn't try and stretch it all the way to the sides of the monitor, which is what it did.

[unidan]

Hi, so as to understand your issue, can you tell us the aspect ratio of your TV and the aspect ratio of your video? you can get the TV's one by giving its resolution, and the video's one by pressing <ctrl+J> to have the codec window.

the aspect ratio key change the desired aspect ratio, mainly to 4:3, 16:9, best fit (which is bigger while keeping proportion and not cropping), fit (same with cropping so that all the screen is filled), fill (no cropping and don't keep proportion).

If your video is 4:3 and you set it to 4:3, it should change your aspect ratio typically.