Widescreen Movies Not Stretched Properly

[HartleySan]

Maybe you all have had this problem. And maybe there isn't a solution, but I figured I should ask.

I have a widescreen monitor and I use PowerDVD to watch movies on my PC. Sometimes (and this seems to happen with older DVDs) even though the DVD is "widescreen", when I go to full-screen mode, the DVD does not properly stretch out to the left and right edges of the screen.

The video remains widescreen, but it's still within the window created when you watch a 4:3 movie. However, if I watch the DVD on my TV player, it stretches out to the edges properly.

Why is this? And more importantly, is there any way to fix it (i.e. is there some DVD-viewing software that will properly stretch the image)?

[nurbs]

Some widescreen dvds are actually encoded like 4:3 DVDs with bigger black bars and a smaller 16:9 or 2.35:1 picture. If you have a new TV they tend to stretch 4:3 pictures to 16:9 and crop a bit from bottom and top by default.

If that's the reason you can try MPC-HC for instance. It has a fullscreen-mode option that will correct this for you.

[HartleySan]

That is exactly what I wanted. Thanks a million.