The book for my new Pana EZ47VK seems to say that it can only record widescreen on RAM disks, not -R. (And I just received my order of 200 Taiyo Yuden -R blanks...) Is this true for all recorders or just some?

Do I also understand correctly that RAM recordings cannot be viewed on any machine other than Panasonic?

it can be viewed on machines supporting the RAM format.

any dvd recorder can record a widescreen signal on -R or +R if the device connected to it can output it, what most dvd recorders won't do is set the anamorphic flag so it will play back correctly on both 4:3 (letterboxed) and 16:9 tvs. What I do is record 16:9 widescreen programs in the squished "normal" mode, a future widescreen tv will "unsquish" the image with no problem. That means of course for now I watch the dvds on a 4:3 tv "squished", but it isn't too bad.

If playing back such a DVD on a widescreen laptop, I would think that it would be easy to unsquish it, eh?

That depends on your DVD-playing software. The standard Mac OS X "DVD Player" application recognizes the widescreen flag and displays the video in a 16:9 window when the flag is set, but it doesn't have an option to force a 16:9 window when the flag is not set.

What I can do in that case is copy the VIDEO_TS folder from the DVD to my hard disk and set the flag using a freeware app named "myDVDEdit." Then I tell DVD Player to play from the VIDEO_TS folder and the video comes out OK. Or I can burn a new DVD from the modified VIDEO_TS, using Toast.

I only need to do this when I want to play one of my DVD-R's on my Mac, or when I want to give a copy to someone who has a 4:3 TV. On my 16:9 TV (a Panasonic LCD), I have to set the aspect ratio by hand, regardless of whether the DVD has the widescreen flag set or not. My DVD player doesn't upconvert, so everything comes out 480i or 480p (depending on whether I have progressive scan turned on).