Widescreen Letterbox Color Issues
 

For a project that I've just recently completed, it needed to be in widescreen (converted from 4:3 footage) so I 16:9 letterboxed each frame and changed the properties to widescreen and such and everything works and looks fine during playback.

Only when viewed on a standard TV, not widescreen Hi-Def since the letterbox framing doesn't show on those, the black widescreen lines differ in color from say a black ground with white text. It's as though the black background is darker than the widescreen lines and they look more like light grey instead of the entire black background of the screen to match.

Any suggestions on how to fix this or has anyone had this problem?

it's not a problem, it's a feature. :-)
Use the Broadcast filter on your NLE system to bring your blacks to 16RGB instead of zero RGB.

Thanks Douglas. But do you mean simply drop a video fx filter onto the entire track or by doing this another way? In Vegas, mind you.

You could also try dropping a track of black (Media Generators - Solid Color) on a new track under your video.
The trick is, as Douglas mentioned, to set the black to 16-16-16 instead of 0-0-0.