4:3 on a 16:9 display
 

You know how when you do a video in 16:9, burn it to dvd with the flag so that on a 4:3 display, it will appear letterboxed ....
well can it be done the other way round?
Can you make a 4:3 video appear letterboxed on a 16:9 display?

or is that up to the dvd player?

example - broadcast programs that are not in widescreen (early law and order for instance), appear on my widescreen television as 4:3 - as in black bars on the side - as in not stretched out.
But when I produce a dvd in 4:3, it appears stretched out.
Can I set up the dvd's I produce so it tells the player to letterbox it as a 4:3 for a 16:9 display?

did any of that make sense?

Unfortunately you do not have any control over that. It is actually up to the
widescreen display (not the DVD player) how to display it.

dang
I was hoping there was some control. I change the aspect ratio on my television to suit but I know many people don't know what apect ratio means, let alone which one to choose , so will forever be watching a stretched image.

oh well, all the more reason to shoot everything in 16:9 :)

Thanks Rob

I was experimenting with the settings on both my portable DVD player and an HDTV tonight and found that the settings for screen aspect for the player's own screen, don't affect the output signal. No matter how I changed the settings for the player's screen, what the TV received was unchanged. I had to control this entirely with the TV's settings. It required 3 different aspect setting modes, to accomodate all my DVD movies, as they had variations in what they caused the player to send out. Most often, I had to set the TV to "Full" mode to show an undistorted widescreen picture. However, in many cases, the special features and trailers on the disks needed the TV to be set back to "Standard" screen mode, for them to display in an undistorted 4:3 aspect. Sometimes, scenes that were from the widescreen movies, were shown in 4:3 aspect, when repeated in the special feature segments.

its a bit of a hassle but you could try creating a 16:9 file in after effects, or even an NLE such as vegas, avid or premiere with a black background then superimposing the 4:3 video on the 16:9 black background, making sure the 4:3 video is in the middle.