the Mrs got me a Nvidia Shield for Xmas to replace our ancient MacMini running home theatre which is developing issues now.
I have it all running but there are black bars / letter boxing on all films tested so far, the old player did not show these and AFAIK we never asked it to zoom the image.
The TV is a 55" Samsnug curved panel, 18mo old.
Is there a way to remove the bars or is this normal???
The shield audio seems more punchy than the old mac so thats good, DTS passthru seem ok too.
Movies are generally 1.85:1 or 2:35:1, both of which are wider than 1.78:1 for a given height.
So, when you display a movie on a TV screen it will have bars on top & bottom so you can see the full picture. If the movie took up the full height of the screen, the left & right sides would be cut off.
It is basically the reverse of watching old 4:3 (1.33:1) TV programs on a widescreen TV. The video is full height, and has bars on the left and right.
Some TVs, set top boxes, etc have the ability to stretch the video so it takes up the full screen. However, this distorts the aspect ratio making things look taller or wider than normal.
The Shield does not have settings to stretch or crop the video (that I’ve seen, anyway). You can check your TV settings if you want that effect.
