I fully understand there are many guys consider that fitting the video to fullscreen would give the best viewing experience when watching movies.

However, ALL of the commercial Blu-ray movies are actually encoded in 16:9 frame on the disc.

Some of them might be shot in 21:9 aspect ratio (recorded by cinema-wide professional film recorder), but they need to be re-encoded and placed into the 16:9 frame anyway by adding black bars on the top and bottom sides to prevent "distortion" when projecting the video to a perfect 16:9 screen.

I'm not sure if there are any movies originally shot in 32:9 aspect ratio, but they will be translated and planted into 16:9 frame anyway if they are stored on a blu-ray movie disc. The black bars on the top and bottom sides are natively planted in your Blu-ray video. If you don't want to see them, it means your player needs to crop them additionally.

What I'm trying to explain here is that:
In most of cases, a 32:9 monitor is NOT a perfect or the best option if you are looking for a monitor mainly for watching blu-ray movies.

It is not the player doesn't support your monitor, it is you chose a monitor that doesn't fit your 16:9 Blu-ray movies.

This stretch feature is what powerdvd can do without causing additional distortion by enlarging the 16:9 blu-ray video to the left and right edges of your monitor, and crop all the excessive parts on the top and bottom side (after the video got enlarged out of the monitor area while still keeping the original video aspect ratio):
https://www.cyberlink.com/support/faq-content.do?id=21819

If any player does the feature to crop the black bars on the top and bottom sides in order to fit your 32:9 monitor (when playing the Blu-ray movie disc you currently inserted), the video will be a distorted one because this movie seems was not shot in 32:9 aspect ratio originally.

Tradeoff:
Distortion or not?

If the Blu-ray movie you watched was originally shot in 32:9 aspect ratio, powerdvd's cropping feature will help you get a seamless video result on your 32:9 monitor.

Quote I

This stretch feature is what powerdvd can do without causing additional distortion by enlarging the 16:9 blu-ray video to the left and right edges of your monitor, and crop all the excessive parts on the top and bottom side (after the video got enlarged out of the monitor area while still keeping the original video aspect ratio):
https://www.cyberlink.com/support/faq-content.do?id=21819

If any player does the feature to crop the black bars on the top and bottom sides in order to fit your 32:9 monitor (when playing the Blu-ray movie disc you currently inserted), the video will be a distorted one because this movie seems was not shot in 32:9 aspect ratio originally.

Tradeoff:
Distortion or not?

If the Blu-ray movie you watched was originally shot in 32:9 aspect ratio, powerdvd's cropping feature will help you get a seamless video result on your 32:9 monitor.

Tradeoff:
Distortion or not? Not. There is no tradeoff needed.

Thank you for the canned response. I'll try to better reiterate the problem and a solution.

I do agree with you that this is not an optimum monitor to view movies on. This monitor was part of an investment in my home Workstation and at the moment I have neither the space nor budget to sink $2500 more into a dedicated 4K UHD TV for occasional movie enjoyment.

I completely understand aspect ratios and I am very intent on having audio and video as it was intended when I am viewing movies.

I still believe that PowerDVD can add a feature to properly crop the video, if they care about that customer-set. I went through 3 browser plugins before I found one that would properly crop the top and bottom bars from Streaming Video on an ultrawide monitor without over-cropping the content in full-screen mode, BUT it was done AND WITHOUT distortion. Yes, there were black bars on the sides to maintain the aspect ratio. PowerDVD already has the ability to crop and resize. They just need a way to either customize the cropping or dedicate a setting for this resolution while in Fullscreen MODE. As mentioned before, I understand aspect ratios. I know I'll have black bars on the side and I am completely fine with that. But black bars on all sides is such a waste of screen.

If you've looked at my example images, I was able to make the video almost how I want .... in Windowed mode. Crop, fit-to-width (of the window), but the Window is sized just wide enough to both maintain aspect ratio and crop only the bars. No loss of video content, no change in aspect ratio, no black bars on the top and bottom, no distortion. I just need PowerDVD to be resize and crop accordingly but in a Full-screen MODE so that I don't have to see my distracting desktop icons or F11 a blank web-page in the background and Alt-Tab into PowerDVD.

I think there are still some misunderstandings.
Most of movies are NOT shot in 32:9 aspect ratio nor produced in 32:9 aspect ratio after standard post-production (e.g., Blu-ray movies).

So the playback is physically impossible to make the video fit to your 32:9 screen without showing any black bars or columns when the player is still KEEPING the original aspect ratio of the video to prevent video distortion.

If you do any special treatment to remove all those black bars or columns, the DISTORTION would exist anyway.
It is not just about video cropping. Simple video cropping won't achieve what you want.
The objects in the video will be distorted after extended the video either in X-axis or Y-axis direction. It is math.

Powerdvd does not support to make this special treatment happen, and I think the root cause is clear, it would be resulted in a distorted video on the playback screen, and it doesn't matter the video got played in full screen or windowed mode.

A 32:9 monitor is great for the ultra wide view, but it is not a damn good monitor for watching movies because most of movies are not produced in the same aspect ratio.

Is it a "canned" reply?

You really surprise me and perhaps some other users here.

I do believe there are still some misunderstandings. I am not expecting anyone to produce or shoot in 32:9, nor would I want them to. I don't have a problem with vertical columns on the side, only horizontals top and bottom.

The only noticeable distortion that should occur would be the upscaling to make the 1080 pixel tall (less if cropped) fit to my 1440 pixel height. PowerDVD/the computer already does this upscaling to make the 1080 video (with the pre-formatted black bars) fit the height of my screen and appropriately adding massive columns on the sides in Full-Screen Mode. (See image in first post.)

The Upscaling does make the video softer since it's estimating pixels that weren't originally there, but the X,Y ratio should be mathematically the same with some slight rounding error. For my situation, being able to sit back and watch an upscaled movie is preferrable over hunching over trying to watch a movie through a pinhole on this monitor.

PowerDVD already does 80% of what I am asking of it by performing exactly as I am requesting in Windowed mode (see image in first post with all the red). It expands the X,Y proportionally and crops the wasted Y values, I just request they go the one extra step and emulate the zoom effect in Full-Screen viewing mode.

I was just trying to give Cyberlink a sale, but as currently implemented I can use free/cheaper options that provide similar basic features for my needs without all the CyberLink background services I won't be using. I just can't justify dropping $100 to still have to manipulate a program in a windowed mode, then run background tasks, Alt-Tab around, just to watch a movie comfortably.

I've had a similar experience like you. After noticing that Corel's competing product simply stopped working now with Windows 11 for whatever reason (it seems to be impossible to find any reasonable support pages or anything… ) I gave PowerDVD another go (didn't touch it since I got an older OEM version free like 15 years ago, which installed all kind of tools I didn't want, discouraging me to try newer versions) and decided to order a disc on Amazon. Then I noticed the very same issue: No reasonable fullscreen options for my 32:9 screen (a Samsung Odyssey G9, too), wtf?

First of all, I agree, there should be an easier way to just go with an option "Detect actual aspect ratio from video" or whatever. Basically all modern TVs are able to do this, even if the actual video is 16:9. But I'm getting distracted…

I played around for like two hours (and short before cancelling my order) until I finally found a somewhat simple solution. It's cumbersome, but somewhat usable for me (note I'm on an Nvidia card, similar might be possible for other GPUs):

The Samsung Odyssey G9 will be identified by Windows/Nvidia drivers as two different screens, based on whether Adaptive-Sync in the screen's settings is enabled or not. I'm going to somewhat abuse this here to work around other issues like Windows changing positions, resizing etc. (more on that in a moment).

• Now open the Nvidia Control Panel.


• Go to "Display" > "Change Resolution" and click on the "Customize…" button. If the button is disabled, you might have to switch your screen's modes or settings. In my case this is only available with Adaptive-Sync being enabled.


• Tick the checkbox to enable user defined resolution and agree to the terms (what we're doing here won't harm your hardware; you're still doing this at your own risk, obviously).


• Now start creating a new resolution, leave everything at default, but make sure to set the horizontal resolution to 3840 pixels and the vertical resolution to 1440 pixels.


• Confirm everything and look at the top of the resolution list to find the new custom resolution, don't activate it yet.


• Open the screen's settings, go to "Game" and turn "Adaptive-Sync" to off. Your screen might go blank for a second, then show the desktop again.


• Now go and activate the new resolution we just created.


• If your screen's image is stretched to full width/height, pick the category "Adjust desktop size and position" and make sure you're set to "Keep Aspect Ratio" and doing the scaling by "Display".


• If everything worked, you should end up with a widescreen image that's filling the center 75% of your screen (rather than the middle 50% when running in 16:9).


• Now open PowerDVD and let it upscale/cut-off extra content and you should get a nice fullscreen image for movies that would show letterboxing in 16:9.


• Once you're done viewing (or you're watching an acutal 16:9 movie), just open the screen settings and re-enable Adaptive-Sync. Your desktop should automatically switch back to 5120x1440 or whatever you're using.

So if everything is working out, you've got two states for your screen, which you can somewhat quickly change for different movies:

• Keep Adaptive-Sync enabled for your regular PC usage as well as watching full 16:9 movies.


• Disable Adaptive-Sync when you want to watch anything in 2.39:1 or similar ratios.


• Since Windows thinks you're using two different screens, all your Windows should stay in their regular positions/sizes, avoiding the typical issues whenever you change resolutions.

Of course you could also try different horizontal pixel resolutions, but this worked fine for me and the cut-off at the top and bottom is really minimal (only tested with Godzilla vs. Kong so far).

Looks very nice, please excuse the random chaos on my desk!



Minor note: I'm fully aware there's still some minimal cut-off at the top and the bottom, since I didn't use 3440x1440 (the proper 2.39:1 ratio), I just felt better using proper 75% instead.

Thanks for the tip Smaxx, it didn't work for me but you put me down the right path!

Im using a Samsung G9 Neo (LS49AG950NUXEN) - when I disable adaptive sync it does indeed come up as a different screen but customize resolution is greyed out in the Nvidia drivers. However if I switch the screen from 240Hz down to 120Hz in the screens OSD a bunch of extra resolutions comes up, including 3440x1440! I then set the scaling mode to perform scaling on gpu and select no scaling. I'm left with a 21:9 resolution with black bars either side as I wanted, and "crop to fill" looks correct.

So in my case I leave adaptive sync on and just switch from 240Hz down to 120Hz.

Edit: Adaptive sync needs to be off for the scaling to work, so 120Hz + adaptive sync off then select 3440x1440 and "no scaling" with gpu scaling.

Quote However if I switch the screen from 240Hz down to 120Hz in the screens OSD a bunch of extra resolutions comes up, including 3440x1440!

Nice! Interesting to know. Unfortunately I get a bunch of resolutions, too, but no 21:9 as far as I'm aware (not to forget the scaling is still borked on the Non-Neo ). I can pick GPU or display no matter what, it will always upscale with GSync on.

But hey, guess it's a small win for both of us. 😅

PS: Any chance you have GSync enabled in fullscreen only? That could explain that one, too.

Ah you're right actually, scaling does break with adaptive sync turned on in the monitor OSD as well.

I must have left adaptive sync off while I was messing around with this last night.

So yeah 120Hz + Adaptive sync off gets the desired behavior.
A couple of steps that would be unneccesary if powerDVD allowed smart scaling but it'll do for now!