Viewing dvds on wide screen tv

[petrea]

This is probably a dumb question ..but
If I burn a dvd with 4:3 will it show ok on a widescreen tv? Or should I change the format?
Thanks
Petrea

[heinz-oz]

It's not a dumb question but not easy to answer either.

How your video will display also depends on the settings of your DVD player. Generally speaking, you cannot display a 4:3 aspect ratio in 16:9 and have it look alright. It is going to be stretched horizontally. There is also not much point in changing your project settings to wide screen unless the video was taken in that format.

[petrea]

I just finished a slide show...put in 4:3 format - will that show ok on a wide screen tv?
thanks

[Ken Berry]

As Heinz just said, it will appear all right, but if you have the TV set to show a DVD in 4:3 mode, your slideshow will appear in the correct proportions, but it will have black spaces at each side. If you set it to show at 16:9, your slides will he stretched to right and left i.e. distoring the photos. If you set it to Letterbox, it will fill the wide screen, but you risk losing parts of your slides.

In future, if you want a proper widescreen slide show, I suspect you will have to trim your photos so they have a wide screen ratio and thus can be expected to fill a widescreen TV in 16:9 mode.

[petrea]

Thanks so much.
Petrea