How would dvd movie which is a full screen format appear on a wide screen tv. I have a lot of full screen dvd movies and I am thinking of buying a wide screen tv and getting rid of my regular conventional tv. can I make my full screen dvd movies become wide screen on a wide screen tv without any distortion

From what I've seen all you'll get is two black bars along the sides of the film instead of the bars being on the top and the bottom of the movie. It'll still be in 4:3 aspect ratio and will be just fine as far as viewing experience is concerned.

Depending on your DVD player/Recorder there may be a zoom option on the remote. The zoom mode allows for different screen fill modes i.e. 16:9, 4:3 and pan & scan. Sony, Toshiba, JVC and Panasonic allow various zoom or screen fill modes. Some widescreen televisions/monitors also have various screen fill modes. A word of advice though, the fill modes will distort the aspect ratio of everything on the DVD.

Any decent HD/16:9 monitor will give you several options for either stretching or zooming or displaying in 4:3. Personally, I find very few DVD's that look good when stretched or zoomed, not enough resolution. Same is true of DTV satellite picture, not enough resolution for zooming. But this will depend on the size of your monitor, a 40" screen might allow more zooming and stretching than a 52".

How big a TV? All kinds of 4:3 sources still look fine on my JVC 34" set, in what JVC calls "Panorama" mode, and getting rid of those black vertical bars will do wonders for helping you avoid "burn-in"