Not any of the releases fit a widescreen TV

hi, am i the only one that has notised that not any of the shows are in real
widescreen (720x576), why is that?

it is very annoying with a black field on the top and bottom, and if i zoom it
in, i\'ll loose alot of the picture.

well if you haven't noticed, even stuff on hdtv doesnt fit exactly right,
there's a little cut off the sides for me so that the height fits completely.

oh noes! your screens arent widescreen enough. lol.
all i can say is that all the groups do is record what is broadcast, so blame
the channel companys for sending the broadcasts too wide and blame your tv
creator for making your tv's too small 😛.

that's because 720x576 is the old pal sd resolution, primarily designed for
4:3 displays. lot's of messing around with anamorphic stretching and non-
square pixels etc.

`modern` hdtv resolutions are designed for 16:9 aspect displays.

`720p hdtv` refers to 1280x720, not 720x576.

are you using a dvd player with divx playback for watching these by any
chance??

because for some reason some of the players only crop 16:9 divx videos to fit
4:3 only even if you tell the dvd player you are outputting to a 16:9 display.

check by changing the output on your dvd player to 4:3 and you will see it
still has the same size picture output.

i have a recent lg dvd player and it correctly displays divx in full 16:9 no
black bars on sides or top/bottom.. it does tend to cut off some of the side
though but i think this issue is related to your actual tv overscanning, not
the dvd player.

so if this the case and you want full 16:9 divx playback you will have to see
if a firmware fixes the issue which is doubtful or get yourself a new dvd
player and perhaps take a cd to the store to test out before you buy.

you can still test if its going to work even if they only have a 4:3 tv to
test it with.. on the 4:3 tv when you change the output of the dvd player to
widescreen you should have a full picture on the 4:3 display but it will be
squashed in on the sides so you will get people looking stretched because the
dvd player is assuming the 16:9 display will stretch this image back out into
full 16:9

hope this helps you out