I think it's working as designed.

http://www.cobyusa.com/?p=glossary

Letterboxing

The scaling of a widescreen image to fit a standard 4:3 aspect ratio TV screen by shrinking the image so that the width fits exactly. The horizontal black bars that appear above and below the image are actually recorded with the picture, so some of the picture's vertical resolution is lost when you view it. Letterboxing is much more common on DVD movies than VHS videos.

It looks like you want an "anamorphic" version of the movie:

Anamorphic

A type of widescreen display format commonly found on DVD movies. It is optimized for playback on a TV with 16:9 aspect ratio (or TVs with a "vertical squeeze" viewing mode like Sony's 16:9 Enhanced). On a standard TV, anamorphic material look horizontally squeezed. Anamorphic DVDs are often labeled on their cases "enhanced for 16x9 televisions," "enhanced for widescreen televisions," "16x9 anamorphic," or "anamorphic widescreen." An anamorphic widescreen DVD has significantly higher resolution than a letterboxed widescreen DVD. For example, for a film shot in the commonly-used 1.85:1 aspect ratio, a letterboxed DVD presentation uses only 345 vertical scan lines (the remaining scan lines are taken up by the horizontal black bars above and below the image). That same film in anamorphic widescreen will use anywhere from 460 to the full 480 scan lines.

HTH. Corrections welcome.

Cheers,
Scott.

Post #325,144 by Another Scott 4/24/10 12:17:26 PM Reply	I think it's working as designed. http://www.cobyusa.com/?p=glossary Letterboxing The scaling of a widescreen image to fit a standard 4:3 aspect ratio TV screen by shrinking the image so that the width fits exactly. The horizontal black bars that appear above and below the image are actually recorded with the picture, so some of the picture's vertical resolution is lost when you view it. Letterboxing is much more common on DVD movies than VHS videos. It looks like you want an "anamorphic" version of the movie: Anamorphic A type of widescreen display format commonly found on DVD movies. It is optimized for playback on a TV with 16:9 aspect ratio (or TVs with a "vertical squeeze" viewing mode like Sony's 16:9 Enhanced). On a standard TV, anamorphic material look horizontally squeezed. Anamorphic DVDs are often labeled on their cases "enhanced for 16x9 televisions," "enhanced for widescreen televisions," "16x9 anamorphic," or "anamorphic widescreen." An anamorphic widescreen DVD has significantly higher resolution than a letterboxed widescreen DVD. For example, for a film shot in the commonly-used 1.85:1 aspect ratio, a letterboxed DVD presentation uses only 345 vertical scan lines (the remaining scan lines are taken up by the horizontal black bars above and below the image). That same film in anamorphic widescreen will use anywhere from 460 to the full 480 scan lines. HTH. Corrections welcome. Cheers, Scott.
Post #325,151 by drook 4/24/10 1:09:46 PM Reply	"Enhanced for widescreen" is worse That one just said it preserved the 1.85 ratio. So I tried one that said "Enhanced for widescreen TVs". That one had a black border from the TV all around the image, plus black bars top and bottom from the DVD. I could stretch to 16:9 format, which just eliminated the TV-added border on the sides, or "Cinema" which zoomed (preserving aspect ratio) so that the top and bottom TV-added border was gone, which cut off lots of the sides, and still kept the black borders top and bottom from the DVD. No zoom mode eliminated the DVD letterboxing. I know this is a cheap DVD player, but this is just ridiculous. -- Drew
Post #325,156 by Another Scott 4/24/10 2:51:22 PM Reply	I guess you're stuck. Sorry.

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