I recently bought a sammy HL-S5687W and when I play dvds there are black bars on the top and bottom. Are there any dvds that will fill up the entire screen? What ratio will fill the screen?

mata1eao, movie studios and movie directors, still shoot their films in cinemascope, which has an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and will produce the black bars top and bottom when watching on a 16:9 hdtv. It is somewhat annoying, but, because it is a standard that's been around for years, chances are, it won't be dropped by the studios or directors any time soon.
If you are looking specifically for 16:9 movies with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, it is stated on the backside of the dvd case, however, if you limit yourself to 16:9 movies only, you'll miss out on a lot of good movies that were shot in cinemascope. You could of course use the zoom function on your hdtv, but this has a tendancie to fegrade the pq, so I think this is something that we all have to accept, and just enjoy good movies on our expensive hdtv's.

Please do a search or read the FAQ at the top of the forum. Thanks. This is about the third new thread on this subject in the last week.

larry