Burning "anamorphic" DVDs from HD source? (1 Viewer)

[clckworang]

Wasn't sure if this was the right forum for the question, or if I am phrashing it in the right way. But anyway, I recently entered the wonderful world of high-def programming. I found a show that I loved when it first aired, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, that is shown on HDNet but isn't available on DVD. I would love to be able to burn DVDs for it that keeps its widescreen ratio and is anamorphic (for lack of a better word).

I have an HD-DVR as well as a DVDR with hard drive. In the past, before I went HD, I would just record the program onto my DVDR hard drive and then simply burn it. But I have discovered that HD programs come out letterboxed when I put them on my hard drive. I understand that I still am getting the full picture, but it would be much cooler if I were able to burn a disc that takes up the full screen of my widescreen TV. Those black bars on the side can be a bit annoying.

Is there a way to accomplish this? Will I need to buy more equipment? Are there any DVD players out there that can compensate for letterboxed discs? Plus, I am using my TV also as my computer monitor. So, maybe is there a program that I could download that would allow me to control the zoom in such a way that I could fill the screen?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Jason Seaver]

There should be a number of ways around it, depending on your equipment. Before I got my HDTV, I would set my HD-DVR (a Sony HDD-250) to output HD channels as anamorphic 480i and enjoy a noticeable increase in quality on my old 480i widescreen TV. If you can do that, it should be able to squirt it out as anamorphic 480i/480p. The DVD recorder won't care, it'll just record the picture data it receives.

The trouble, I imagine, will come with playback; the DVD recorder probably won't set the "anamorphic" flag properly, so if your TV's like mine, you'll have to watch the resulting DVDs on "full", rather than "natural".