Now that I have acquired the fantastic Samsung 243t 24 inch Widescreen Monitor (16:10 aspect ratio) I see room for improvements to MC's TV Configuration \ Display \ Aspect Ratio \ Crop settings...
I have everything set up for widescreen as much as possible.
When I discovered the TV Configuration \ Display \ Aspect Ratio \ Crop (not Crop Edges) setting I was in hog heaven as now all of my TV channels are now presented in widescreen without any stretching or distortion of the image.
What this means is...
* Standard 4:3 aspect ratio images... are zoomed in until the left and right black bars are off the screen. This also means the image will have the very top and very bottom cut off; a small price to pay for getting rid of the black borders. It also makes for a much larger image on a widescreen monitor as virtually the entire screen is used for the image. Also, there is no stretching or distortion of the image as I have sometimes seen with other methods. This is a very good compromise.
* Widescreen... Here things are a little stickier as there is no real standard for so-called widescreen; is it 16:9, 11:9, 2.35:1 or what The TV Configuration \ Display \ Aspect Ratio \ Crop seems to work the same way as it does for any aspect ratio; it simply zooms in on the image until the black bars on the left and right of the image are off the screen. This works some of the time for any image that is the same ratio as the monitor but it will often leave thin black bars on the top and bottom of the screen when the TV image aspect ratio is not exactly the same as the monitor.
EXAMPLE: All widescreen computer monitors are 16:10 ratio whereas widescreen TV images are usually 16:9. Why the monitor manufactures chose the 16:10 ratio is beyond me but they must have had a pretty good reason as they all do it.
My Suggestion for this problem...
Change the Aspect Ratio Crop feature so it will expand the left and right part of the image far enough off of the screen until the black bars at the top and bottom are gone. In other words, make the top and bottom black bars for wide aspect ratio TV images the determineing factor. This also means the image will have a very small portion of the left and right sides of the image cut off; a small price to pay for getting rid of the top and bottom black borders.
The bottom line is this... Crop should get rid of ALL black borders regardless of the aspect ratio of the original image.