First, I hooked up my antenna from the building roof, and I get plenty of channels OTA, analog and digital. The real test will be Sunday watching football in HD (SD looks noticeably weak). If I like it, I won't get cable (don't watch TV).

Anyway, my question. I hooked up my Yamaha progressive scan DVD through S-video (need to by composite), put in LoTR widescreen version, and the picture is still wide-screen, with horizontal bars. Isn't it supposed to fill my entire 16:9 screen?
Also, the picture is so-so. I thought the TV is supposed upconvert the picture? Or am I expecting too much from upconverting?

TIA.

Some are 2.35:1 which will still show bars on the top and bottom. You can use the zoom feature on your TV to minimize the bars but you will cut off the sides of the picture doing that.

:P

..in the first place, you should be blown away by the HD picture via OTA.
It looked great with my OTA feed....before I took the antenna down (I hardly ever watch live TV* and rarely watch Network TV).

*My Verizon FIOS HD DVR doesn't record from OTA feeds.

that just cuts the sides off slightly and reduces the size of the bars at the top and bottom. Works very well, and I use it all the time.

for using S video! Luckily for you, nobody gives a sh!t what I think, so you get to keep your TV.

And then pop that disc into your dvd player. It should fill the screen completely. A 1.85:1 aspect ratio will be very close with only small bars on the top and bottom.

Don't forget to tell your DVD player to output a widescreen picture in the set up menu too.

And, lastly, buy a new DVD player that utilizes hdmi so you can really appreciate that new tv! I'd go with an Oppo or an entry-level HD DVD from Toshiba with the 7+ free movies.

it looks like the signal sometimes does not arrive in its entirety, which results in distortion... at least that's my educated guess. I'll let you know how the football game goes.

And, yes, I hear you on television. Today I watched the news for the first time in about 8 years - what dross!

The source shows 480i.

If I buy an OPPO upconverting player will it improve DVD picture? Still on the fence about HD-DVD...

either your tv does it, or your dvd does it. if your tv sucks at it, then the oppo will definitely help as iirc it's the best at it out there.

if your tv already does a decent job, the oppo won't help much in that department.

however, the oppo will likely do other things better than your yammy, so get one anyway if you don't want to take the HDDVD/BD plunge just yet.

1) Converting the (i) to (p). Theoretically your progressive scan DVD-player can do this, but sounds like you need to change a setting on it (since it is saying 480i, not 480p). Right now, the TV is doing the I->P.

2) Converting from 480 -> 720 or 1080. Your DVD player can't help here, the TV is doing it.

It could be that your TV is crappy at doing the I->P and if you get the setting on your DVD correct the picture will improve. If not, get something like the Oppo for standard def DVDs or flip a coin and pick BluRay or HD-DVD.

Some nasty pc DVD-rom drive from an off-brand.
It could also be that you are sitting too close to your TV and/or the movie isn't that great for making a TV look god in the first place.

What size screen and how far are you from it?

to put it into 480p mode, it'll look better.

I want to wait and see if I decide to get anything else, before I start ripping my system apart and putting it back together. The amount of wires back there is downright scary. I am thinking to finally let go of the tape deck and the EQ (sobs sentimentally).

Directors deliberately don't put important details at the edges.

mind. For films, if you view WS, you'll get everything except mabye a bit on the sides that is not too bad. Much better then cutting close to 50% of the picture out or distorting the picture to make it fit...

and watched movies in HD for the couple of years that it took for the format war to sort itself out.

When you hear some people talk about "investing" in a HD format, you'd think it was their life savings and retirement that was at stake.

Or just buy both, then you can't lose.

Not really a life-altering risk.