I purchased a widescreen tv in order to be able to watch DVD's in wide screen format. How come many of the DVD's that I buy, still have dark stripes at the top and bottom ever though they say they are the "widescreen edition"??

Maybe because you haven't set the output mode of the player to 'anamprphic' or 'widescreen'. (Either that, or the movies are wider than 16:9.) Check the manual of both the player and the TV.

Larry
www.fineelectricco.com

many of the films produced today are wider than your wide screen tv. A 16:9 TV can display movies that have a screen ratio of 1.85 (the screen ratio is 1.77 but you won't see the back bars because of the over scan / dvd pixle clip)

Movies like Band of Brothers (1.66:1), or Bed of Roses (1.85:1) fill your whole screen as they are the same as your TV.

Movies like Lord of the Rings (2.35:1), or Black Hawk Down (2.35:1) will give you black bars as the ratio of width to hight exceed the size of your TV even though they are widescreen anamophic disks.

Hope this helps out.

i watched Metro last night, Eddie Murphy fan, and even though it's 2.35.1, the movie has huge bars on the top and bottom. The only other movie I have seen such huge bars was bugs life. Very distracting.

There are many formats of what is considered widescreen. And depending on how your TV is set, and how your DVD player is set. Determines along with the format of the movie, how little or how much of the black bars you will or will not see. For more on this I suggest you visit this page.
[Link: gregl.net]

Durn thing posted twice...:)

Sounds like a non-anamorphic DVD being played on a 16:9 set. In those cases you have to use a zoom mode on your TV or DVD player to expand the picture vertically to return it to the original aspect ratio.

hitachi has full which is what i use for dvd watching. i will play with the modes next time i run into a dvd like that.

i have the kenwood 5900 player and don't recall seeing anything about zoom in the manual or the screens. i will take another look at the menus and remote.

There should be a mode that stretches the picture vertically. Use that for non-anamorphic disks.

Like the reply from Larry, one common mistake is to not change the output on the dvd player itself. I actually had mine set on 4:3 on my 16:9 tv for about a month (oops). Make sure you set the aspect ratio from the DVD player setup menu to 16:9. A lot of people mess with the tv setup and forget to change the dvd player setup.

Yeah, lots of setups. That's the drawback of todays technology. If your not 'into' it, you will likely miss something important. This is one feature of the DVD that most people forget.

Matt's right! Let's round 'em all up and keep them for ourselves, the 'into it' people.

Yaarrghh!

Have you paid attention lately the way some DVD movies are burnt? On the menu you have a choice of 16X9 or 4X3 aspect ratios, and that's the way it's going to be from now on,my friends (COOOOOOOOOL)!!!