Full Screen HD TV Viewing

[Beauregard45920]

I have a Samsung 40" 1080p HD LED TV set, to which I have connected an HP laptop via an HDMI cable. I have been using this setup to play DVD movies, running VLC 2.0.7 under Windows 7. This works fine, except that even when I use the full screen feature in VLC, the picture does not actually fill the full 40" TV screen.

Recently a friend demonstrated a Samsung BluRay player, also connected to the TV set via an HDMI cable, to play an ordinary, non-BluRay DVD movie. To my surprise, the picture filled the entire TV screen, with great clarity. Is it possible to tweak VLC in some way so that I can use it to watch movies that fill the entire TV screen?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Use the Aspect Ratio options in the menu or using the hotkeys.

[Beauregard45920]

Use the Aspect Ratio options in the menu or using the hotkeys.

The Aspect Ratio options change the geometry of the display, as advertised, but they don't fill the TV screen. There is still a substantial border surrounding the picture, no matter what Aspect Ratio is chosen. I also tried Zoom, which does not seem to change the picture at all.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

You have borders on both side too?

[Beauregard45920]

You have borders on both side too?

Yes, there are 4 1/2" borders on each side, and 4" borders on top and bottom, at the Default Aspect Ratio setting. The side borders are always 4 1/2", but the top and bottom borders vary in size depending on the Aspect Ratio settings, and they are always at least 4".

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Wow, This is really weird.

[Beauregard45920]

Wow, This is really weird.

I think I have solved the mystery. I had the PC screen resolution set to 1400 X 1050, because that was the highest resolution that showed all of the desktop icons in their entirety. As an experiment, I set the screen resolution to 1920 X 1080, which resulted in the desktop icons being cropped on the sides, but still (just barely) usable. When I then used VLC to play a DVD, the side borders disappeared, although there were still small top and bottom borders visible, ranging in size from 1" to 1 1/2". At any rate, despite the lack of whatever technological wizardry enabled the BluRay player to make ordinary DVD images have greater clarity, the movies now fill (almost) the full screen. Unless you have further suggestions as to how to improve viewing, we can consider the issue closed.

Thank you for taking the time to address the problem, and I apologize for my own negligence in not thinking of the lessened PC screen resolution as its source. Just for the record, I am an enthusiastic advocate of VLC, and have recommended it to all of my friends.

[gonzalesjon]

to beauregard, If you set your screen to 1920x1080p you have to change the text size as well which changes the icons as well, to do this right click mouse go to screen resolution and click make text sizes larger or smaller. Also you can setup the movie to automatically fill your screen by adding the settings in the vlc by going to tools>preferences>video>force aspect ratio>16:9>save. Please keep in mind depending on your resolution you have to change the aspect ratio for instance. 1920x1080p= 16:9 1280x720p=16:9 1024x768=4:3 theres also 16:10 and 5:3. personally from my experience I usually run my setup in 1280x720p with 125 text size and everything seems to work well.