Movies from older DVD's are smaller on large screen

[Collectingpool]

I've come across the is problem on several DVD's, usually from 1990-2000 where after the movie is ripped, the movie appears much smaller in size on screen (in Plex and VLC). Some movies appear much smaller especially on larger screen TV's. I've ran the movies through Handbrake and it's helped, but it is painfully long and drawn out sometimes up to 3 hours. Unfortunately Handbrake also compresses the movie as well. Is there another process, I can use to fix this problem. I've also used MKVToolNix to change the aspect but it has no effect even when I try cropping. (I admit my skills with it are next to zero)

What am I missing? Searching for a fix is next to impossible. I'm pretty sure it's not a MakeMKV problem. All that I come up with is that there was some poor DVD authoring method back then. I sure would like to get to the bottom of this problem.

Thanks In Advance!

[Woodstock]

Are you referring to the fact that older disks tend to stick with the 640x360 size of a DVD, rather than making full use of the available 720x480 display size?

That tends to be because video of that era was generally sized to match the TV size, rather than taking advantage of the disk. You can get VLC to resize them, but the default is rather small. I have a lot of stuff sized for old screens, and it does expand when you ask VLC and other programs to show it larger, but the resolution is limited.

Later DVDs took advantage of the larger resolution available, and some used "oversized dots" to make them bigger, so it looks better with newer stuff. Especially when dealing with movie that encode as 800 or 900 by 480, instead of fitting in to 640x360.

[Collectingpool]

Yes, I think that sounds about right. Do you have any suggestions to help make these fit the screen better? Sometimes it's actually a little humorous to watch one of these on an 85" screen. I've had one friend tell it's like watching a postage stamp--a little exaggerated, no doubt, but still.

But if Handbrake is my only option, I guess it is what it is.

Thanks for responding!

Dan

[Woodstock]

Handbrake doesn't fix this, unfortunately. The most resolution you get out of handbrake <i>by design</i> is the original resolution. You can bypass some things to force it to resolve bigger, but they do not help matters that much.

Is that 85" screen at 4K resolution, or something different? Just curious, mostly... I've been using 50-55" 4K monitors, and VLC usually restricts its output to 2x video resolution, except when made "full screen".