question about dvd widescreen

[wooj]

i dont know if this was the right forum to ask.
but i just ordered the westinghouse 37in.

my question is i have these regular dvds in widescreen format and when i watch them on my 21inch widescreen gateway monitor or 14 inch laptop i still get the black bars to the top and bottom of the screen...

i thought when having a widescreen monitor these dvds would fill the whole screen.

ive tried vlc player to change the aspect ratio and crop to 16x10 and i still get black bars where if i had a divx movie i could get it to fill the screen.

any help would be appreciated, thanks

 

[artmonkey]

I use 'Power DVD' to zoom if I really want the image to fit the screen but I don't like changing the aspect ratio because the distortion bothers me. It sounds a bit strange that you can't get VLC to sort out your problem, I would have throught it would have just the options you need.

I know DVD's are a fixed resolution of 480x720 or 576x768 (NTSC/PAL) and they either have black bars burnt into the image or they fill that res and have a non square pixel aspect which is probably screwing up your software. I suggest keep trying different software and see if it helps.

I for one would like a wider monitor than 16:10... 2.4:1 would be nice, of course the res and size would have to be high

 

[kuyaglen]

LCD tv's are 16:9 while widescreen pc monitors are 16:10. Most widescreen DVD movies are 16:9, so with the Westy tv the black bars on the top and bottom would be gone...unless...

You view a 2.35:1 content.

Its all in the aspect ratios. Play around on this site http://tvcalculator.com/ it will show you differences a lot better than I can tell them to you.