This is an issue I've had with the Harman Kardon DVD 47 that their tech support had never heard of; but I can't imagine why I'd be the only one to have this happen. Simple set-up, strange issue.
I've got an older DVD player and an HD cable box/DVRrunning into my TV. The TV is a Sony Bravia (1 HDMI port, 2 component). The TV is set to standard wide/16:9 mode, so that when watching 4:3 content, I get the vertical bars, and when watching widescreen, it stretches appropriately. The TV does this fine, as it is supposed to, with my DVR/cable box (HDMI) and with my old DVD player (component).
So I replace the DVD player to the HK DVD 47. I run HDMI from the DVD player to the TV, and set the DVD player's settings to "TV is 16:9". According to all documentation, this will output in 4:3 for 4:3 content and not stretch it. Except that it does. Everything is stretched to 16:9.
So then I connect the DVD player to the TV via component instead of HDMI. Same thing happens.
So then I change the setting on the DVD player to 4:3. Everything is STILL stretched to 16:9, regardless of the content aspect ratio.
HK tech support is baffled, and at first wanted to blame the TV, then the "new world of technology that is HDMI" (lame excuse, and anyway it doesn't hold water, since it happens over component, too). Now they don't know what it is and are "investigating" while I have a DVD player that really is (from my perspective) currently worse than the one I was replacing it with.
I reconnected my old player and everything worked as expected, so it's definitely the HK DVD player that's the problem.
So... anyone have this happen? I have to assume it happened to at least a batch of the players.
