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.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Nov 10. 2021 06:22