I am relatively clueless about HDTV and A/V stuff in general.

That being said, I have been having problems with this t.v, a sanyo ht30746.
The t.v is in aspect ratio 16:9 i think, so I figured movies that are in that same ratio should take up the whole screen correct? And not leave the regular "letterbox" black bars on top and bottom. Well, for some reason, on all 4 picture size settings the t'v has, it leaves them and distorts the picture by stretching it to allow room for the bars.

Is it a problem with the t.v, like maybe a setting I have to adjust somewhere? Or could it maybe be the DVD player? The player is an APEX AD-1500, a pretty cheap older model. I am also using regular red white and yellow cables, if that could maybe be part of it too, would it help if i switch to hdmi?


thanks in advance for any help!

I'm not familiar with either of your components, however, I'll comment. The DVD player needs to be setup for a 16:9 set. The DVD player setup menu should allow for this. If not, you are better off upgrading your DVD player.

When an anamorphic/enhanced for widescreen movie is played on the DVD player the player sends the video in a vertically stretched format which the tv unstretches into the 16:9 frame. A signal is embedded in the video that the tv may autodetect and adjust to the correct screen mode. For Sony sets, this is usually called FULL. I'm not sure if this signal can be carried on composite video(yellow jack) or if your set autodetects. If your tv and dvd player are both component video (red,green,blue jacks) cable then I would suggest upgrading to that. It will provide far superior video quality.