Widescreen movies now play with Black Bars on Top and Bottom

Plex Media Server
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Does not matter if I’m using my 4K TV, Roku, Web Browser, or PC App, my widescreen movies now have black bars on the top and bottom.

Is this is a new Feature/Bug of the latest Plex Server? Or is it a bug when you sign up for Plex Pass?

I just updated Plex on my Synology and nVidia Shield to the latest versions after paying for Plex Pass, and now can’t find a way to play my widescreen movies full screen on my widescreen TVs or Laptop without black bars on top and bottom.

For reference the version on my Synology is 1.29.2.6364-7000, not sure on Shield but it’s today’s newest version.

Any help appreciated.

ST

Update 12/15/22

After I wrote this I did a lot of testing and my conclusion is this:

  • The Plex TV and Roku app needs a “Fit to screen” option (like all other major video streaming apps and Bluray players)

Here’s how I came to that conclusion:

  1. Testing with the Plex App on iOS and Android showed that the app on these devices DOES have this option.

Double tap and the video fits the whole screen. I suspect this is a iOS and Android feature and not a Plex feature since the Plex TV app does not support this in any of the menus I could find.

  1. Testing on TV’s revealed something else.

On TCL Roku tv’s there is a zoom feature available while in the Plex App to eliminate the black bars, however I believe this is a TCL TV feature and not a Roku or Plex feature because on several other Roku setup boxes of different types this feature is sadly not present.

Another result from testing several TVs is that not all TVs support a Video Zoom feature. While my TCL and Sony TVs both have this feature, my Vizio and Samsung do not.

Conclusion:

With this in mind, and given that movie streaming services and Bluray players have the Zoom / Fit to TV screen option as default, for Plex not to fall behind the rest of the industry I believe it’s going to need this option with the TV App.

Side note:

I believe the reason why I thought this was a new “bug” with the Plex TV App is that I had mostly been watching TV Series ripped from blurays, which being TV series just defaults to being full screen versus cinematic widescreen. That and the fact that the mobile apps and TCL TV both had zoom features built in, and it had been sometime since I watched a movie from Plex on my Vizio - on that TV I mostly use Netflix and Prime video which as mentioned above automatically “fit to screen” cinematic widescreen movies.

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If the movies are full width on the screen, it’s just a matter of the aspect ratio of the movie not being the same as your TV. But there are settings you can play with.

I’ll describe this on the Shield, but it should apply generally to all devices:

  1. While a movie is playing, press ‘down’ on the remote.
  2. Go to the action menu (far right of the control bar, 3 vertical dots)
  3. Go to Playback Settings.

The bottom item on this menu is “Display Mode.” Play with this setting to find what works for you. Once you do this, I believe it should apply to all movies played on that device, so you should only have to do it once.

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In general, you want Letterbox. That setting stretches the video to use as much screen as possible while maintaining the aspect ratio.

@beckfield is correct. The setting is persistent. It applies to all movies played on that device.

See these two posts:

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Don’t forget… if you change that setting, it will likely affect all of your videos from that point on. So movies that are not “widescreen” will be zoomed in, and you won’t actually see the full width and height of the original video.

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