How do I get rid of the black boxes on the top and bottom?

bazjack21

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Aug 3, 2009
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Hi I'm relatively new to HDTVs and blu ray players. I just bought a Panasonic TC-P42X1 plasma 720p tv with native aspect radio 16:9. I also have a Dell Studio Slim hooked up as a HTPC with a Radeon HD 4550 video card via hdmi. This computer came with a blu ray player onboard and I use PowerDVD to play my blu ray movies. However, when I play my movies, through PowerDVD, there are rather large black boxes running horizonal on both the top and bottom of the display. Is there any way to get rid of these?

It seems rather silly to have a widescreen tv, and then watch a movie in widescreen that shrinks it down even skinnier. I have tried different formatting options of the TV from "JUST", "Fill" and "Zoom", however these don't fully extend the display from top to bottom. Zoom is the best, however it cuts off the extreme left and right parts of the movie. Is there any way to stretch it vertically without changing the horizontal size?

I also tried to mess with the PowerDVD display settings, however it does not seem to affect the display at all. Should I try using a different blu ray playback option? Or am I limited by my TV's display settings?

Thanks,
B