While watching Video/Live Tv & DVD in some cases the video crops from sides.

Sometimes it seems that while browsing through the channels Media Center has it’s own opinion on what zoom level should be used for certain content. Well, the short answer is that it does. There are a few registry settings that will let you change the default zoom setting for specific types of video content.

Currently, Media Center saves default zoom modes for four different areas: ASTA/ClearQAM, DVD, TV (Analog) and Video. Each of these settings is assigned a value from 0-3 corresponding with the four zoom modes:

0. Normal
1. Stretch Standard to Wide
2. Stretch Wide to Standard (Cropping Sides)
3. Smart Stretch

To edit the default values for these video modes open regedit in Administrator mode (start –> type “regedit” –> ctrl+shift+enter) and navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\VideoSettings

On the right scroll down until you find “ZoomMode_ATSC”, “ZoomMode_DVD”, “ZoomMode_TV” and “ZoomMode_Video”. Double-click any of these entries and replace it with the value from above to set the default zoom mode for that mode.

Update: Some users are reporting that their registry entries are still being changed by Media Center. To prevent this right-click the VideoSettings key and select “Permissions”. In the Permissions dialog press the “Advanced” button, select each of the users listed and press “Edit”. Select the checkbox to Deny “Set Value” to each of these users. This will prevent the registry entries from being changed by Media Center.

Unfortunately, after changing these values to deny writing Media Center ignores these values completely. If anyone comes across a solution for this conundrum let us know in the comments below!