PowerDVD confusion!

[Ender]

This is the first time I have been playing a DVD on my computer, so I apologize for any newbie questions.


1) When I play the movie (Gladiator) It has two large black bars above them.. this is Widescreen right? If not, any way I can make the movie the entire size of my screen (21")?

2) When I started playing Gladiator, this thing went up saying I'm in DDraw or something and it's recomended that I convert to another mode, frogot what it was called, to maximize quality. It only popped up for about 30 seconds then it disappeared. How do I go about converting modes, and would it help any?

That's all thanks guys.

 

[konichiwa]

<< 1) When I play the movie (Gladiator) It has two large black bars above them.. this is Widescreen right? If not, any way I can make the movie the entire size of my screen (21")? >>

You should just be able to drag the viewing box to make it bigger or select a Zoom property in PowerDVD.

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

Yeah, the black bars are there b/c its widescreen. If you right click, then pan&scan, play with those options if you want to cover the whole screen...with the drawback of not seeing the right and left edges of the screen.

 

[konichiwa]

<< Yeah, the black bars are there b/c its widescreen. If you right click, then pan&scan, play with those options if you want to cover the whole screen...with the drawback of not seeing the right and left edges of the screen. >>

Yes but before you make that (bad) decision, you should read about what you'd be missing:
WideScreen
Anamorphic/WideScreen

However, last I checked, Gladiator DVD was Anamorphic Widescreen, meaning you should be able to make a software DVD player remove the widescreen bars as if it were a 16:9 TV...right? Or am I missing something?