DVD recorder 16x9 vs. 4x3 -- and windowboxed?

[merchantord]

I have a Toshiba DR570KU that I use to make transfers to DVD in my office. Last night I was recording a streaming program and watching it on my trusty 27" 4:3 JVC CRT television. The image displayed in letterboxed fashion as it should since the program was filmed in the 16:9 ratio. However when I watched it on my 65" Panasonic ZT60 today the image is 16:9 but it is windowboxed.

Can anyone tell me why that is? Is there a setting that I'm overlooking? Is this even anything I can control on my end?

This is a different issue (I think) than that one outlined in my other post on non-anamorphic to anamorphic as that was a DVD ISO to DVD situation.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

-- merged --

I think I may have answered my own question. The device I was recording the streaming content from was set to display on a 4:3. 16:9 content will display letterboxed on a 4:3 screen as it should but would likely windowbox as it currently is on a true 16:9 screen.

Am I correct in my thinking here?

[sanlyn]

A 4:3 recording device records 16:9 video as letterboxed in a 4:3 DAR frame. If you play the 4:3 video on a 16:9 display, the video remains a 4:3 frame with a letterboxed 16:9 image inside. A 4:3 frame on a 16:9 TV will have side pillars to fill the screen. Therefore, the image has 4 borders: a top and bottom border in the original recording, and a left and right border placed there by the wide screen device.

To make that 4:3 recording fill more of the screen, you have to zoom in all 4 sides of the image. If you simply stretch the image horizontally with picture controls (or use software to re-set the DAR from 4:3 to 16:9 without re-encoding), the image will be stretched side to side, people will be fat, and you'll still have the letterbox. The other solution is to decode the 4:3 video to lossless media, crop off the top and bottom letterbox borders, resize the resulting image, and re-encode the video. For DVD or standard definition BluRay, the 16:9 cropped image would be resized to 720x480 (720x576 PAL) and re-encoded for 16:9 display. For non-SD, non-DVD, non-BluRay playback such as MP4 or MKV square-pixel formats, the 16:9 image would be resized to 856x480 to fill a 16:9 display.

These fixes apply to true 16:9 images. If the original video is from a movie, the image isn't likely 16:9. The only movies Hollywood shoots in 16:9 aspect ratio are TV movies. Movie-theatre film is usually shot at 1.85:1 or 2.35:1, which are wider than 16:9 -- hence, you get letterbox for those aspect ratios regardless of the playback display unless the display has a physical frame size that is exactly the same aspect ratio as the video.

Your specific recorder model can be set to record a video with 16:9 playback DAR. This works only if the incoming source or broadcast is 16:9 to begin with and not letteboxed. I used to be able to get such a signal with my old Samsung ATSC/QAM HD tuner and analog cable input direct from RF cable (not from the cable box outputs). The Tuner could output widescreen video that filled the entire 720x480 frame and my Toshiba RD-XS34 encoded the recording for 16:9. When my cable company "improved" things by encrypted all signals and requiring a cable box for all channels, it rendered my HD tuner useless.