How To Easily Adjust The Screen Size On Your Vizio TV

By Trae Jacobs,

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Have you ever pulled up an old movie or watched a show that doesn’t fit on your tv? This is an issue with the “Aspect Ratio” of your television.

Go into your Menu and find System. In System, you should be able to go straight to Aspect Ratio. In Aspect Ratio, you can pick the type of picture size you want.

So, how easy is it to adjust the picture size on your screen? Adjusting the picture size on your Vizio TV should be as easy as four steps!

What is Aspect Ratio?

You will often see “screen size” and “aspect ratio” used interchangeably.

Aspect ratio is the technical term for your screen size. It allows you to see your video without distortion. It is the width and height of your viewing screen.

For instance, a widescreen will have an aspect ratio of about 16:9.

You will recognize it by the two black bars on the top and bottom of your screen.

Ensuring you have a good aspect ratio or screen size is important for your viewing pleasure and if you want to have a screensaver on your Vizio TV.

Adjusting Picture Size

Now let’s get into the four easy steps to adjust the picture size of your Vizio TV. According to Vizio Support, you should just be able to follow these easy steps:

Grab your remote and click on the Menu button
Using your arrow keys, toggle over to the System settings, then click it
From there, you should be able to toggle to Aspect Ratio and click on that one
Choose what picture size you want: Normal, Wide, or Zoom

Simple, right? Not sure what picture size you want or what those mean? Let’s take a look at the three options.

Have you lost your Vizio TV remote? Don’t worry! You can get a universal remote, and there are ways to use a Vizio TV without a remote!

What is a “Normal” Picture Size

The “normal” picture size of your Vizio television will be based on whatever your content’s default.

This means that if you have content that normally is widescreen, it will be widescreen, and if you watch Netflix and it fills up the screen, your tv will adjust accordingly.

Most TVs will be automatically set on this feature, making it easy to set up.

Wide Picture Size

Wide picture size is going to be what everyone calls “wide-screen.” So here, you will see the 16:9 or even 4:3 aspect ratio.

As mentioned above, the defining feature of a “wide-screen” aspect ratio is the two long black bars on top and bottom of your screen. It will look like your picture has stretched horizontally.

Most old TVs were actually more square-shaped, but the movie theaters were this widescreen shape.

Nowadays, most, if not all, televisions are in widescreen shape already.

The Zoom Picture Size of a Vizio

As you can imagine, the zoom picture size will zoom into your picture. This becomes especially helpful if you go from a wide screen to a smaller aspect ratio.

This will make it so that your picture fills the entire screen of your Vizio. It also means that it will likely cut off your picture’s top, bottom, and sides.

Can’t Adjust Screen Size

If you are having trouble finding the aspect ratio or screen size in your settings, it could be because the program you are using is fixing it for you automatically.

There are two ways this can be fixed:

If you have a remote for that program, like the Roku remote, you can go through their settings and find Picture Settings.
Look at the remote for that device and see if they have a button for “widescreen” or “normal”.

Difference Between Screen Size and Picture Settings

Now, there is a difference between Screen Size and Picture Settings.

The screen size, or aspect ratio, is going to change the width and height of the picture. This means it could stretch or shrink the image on your Vizio TV.

Whereas the picture settings are going to look at how the picture looks. The quality, ambient light, and contrast settings are all going to be within the picture settings.

How to Access the Picture Settings

Once you set up the size of the picture, you can also look at changing the lighting of your image. Again, this should all be set up for you when you first turn on your television.

Go into the Menu
Select Picture

From here, you can toggle up and down with the arrows and determine what you want to change.

When you’re adjusting the picture settings, also make sure that all of your external devices are plugged in properly, like with the HDMI cables, to prevent any distortion.