This may be a long shot, as I think there is something in the interaction between my TV and XBox 360 that is causing a problem. But I have called both Microsoft and Toshiba to no avail and am at my wit's end.
I just replaced my DVD player with a XBox 360 as my primary movie playback device. I went to watch a movie last night, though, and had some trouble.
The movie was presented in 1.85:1 widescreen, which should produce black bars on the top and bottom of my 16:9 aspect ratio Toshiba 46H84 HDTV. However, it was obvious that the XBox was stretching the picture vertically to fit the screen, causing an unnatural distortion in the picture, as the black bars were absent and characters were noticably taller. DVDs presented in SUPER widescreen (2.35 to 1, like Gladiator), produced small black horizontal bars, but not the larger bars that an aspect ratio like that should demand. What settings do I need to change to have DVDs play back in their natural aspect ratio?
The 360 is hooked up with the component cable to my component video input on my TV, with the switch on the cable set to "HDTV". Under "Console", I have the resolution set to 1080i, though experimenting with other resolutions made no difference.
Keep in mind that I used the exact same component input on my TV, and changed no settings on it. However, I also went through every possible setting on the TV to no avail as well.
What am I missing? If anyone can figure this out I'll be extremely grateful.