I recently got ReplayTV and want to archive TV episodes and movies to KVCDs. I currently have a Sony 27" 4:3 TV. I don't have a DVD burner yet.

For the movies broadcast in widescreen (recorded at 9.8Mbps MPEG2 @ 720x480), I'd like to burn them so I can maintain letterbox on my current TV and still take full advantage of the screen real estate a widescreen TV down the road, without re-encoding all my discs then. I certainly don't want to find my KVCD collection is only viewable as a tiny letterbox-within-letterbox on a new $5K TV...

From the archives, it looks like an anamorphic (= 16:9 AR?) KVCD would be the way to go, but I've seen warnings like "very few DVD players will properly play anamorphic VCDs". No one names specific models though. Others have mentioned hard coding the 16:9 aspect ratio while burning, but that this will not look correct on TVs.

I'm considering upgrading my DVD player, possibly to multi-disc (I've got an older Sony DVP-S530D that only likes CD-RW discs, which are pricy and slow). I'd like to future proof the investment as much as possible though.

So, to the subject of the post...

Which DVD players will properly play an anamorphic KVCD to both 4:3 TVs and 16:9 TVs?

If I instead use 4:3 w/ letterbox and a relatively high-res (528x480), will I be able to zoom in on that with a widescreen TV (a standard feature or not?) and be happy with the result?

Or should I just save my pennies for a DVD burner and hope the blank media gets cheaper quickly (cheaper = well under a dollar in quantities of 100 or less) so I can properly use the anamorphic flag?

PS: Surprised to see no posts about RTV in the forums - no one is using one with KVCDs for archiving? I might do a FAQ on that, once I get this all figured out...

Hi gpupurs, and welcome .

I have a Panasonic DMR-E20, and I transcode all the time to KVCDs.
I burn all my KVCDx as 4:3 and all wide screen movies I do look identical to original DVD's aspect on my Samsung 32" HDTV. Can't say about captures, because I have C-band Satellite (4DTV system) and all (99%) transmissions are full screen. Anyway, I have a Panasonic RP-56 DVD player connected to the HDTV and it works flawlessly. I also have a JVC 7 disk changer (JVC XV-F80BK) that works just as good, and that is connected to an old 60" Magnavox rear screen projection TV. All my wide screen non-anamorphic KVCDs encoded as 4:3 look identical to the original source. You should try encoding a couple of KVCDs as anamorphic 4:3 or 16:9, and take them to a store like Sears Brand Central and test them on as many players as you can. That's what I do every time I go buy a new player

-kwag