DVD-Rip burning - odd sizes

[substyle]

I just realized this thread is probably in the wrong forum. Mods feel free to delete.
--------------

Please excuse my newbish-ness I just got my first DVD that I authored to work on my standalone DVD player.

I downloaded a DVD-Rip MPG, demultiplexed it, authored it, and burned it using Nero. It plays fine in my DVD player, however I was led to believe that a DVD-Rip should look identical to having the original DVD in my player. The picture is pretty good, however it is very small in the height area. It's stretched out completely across my 16:9 TV but there are HUGE blank areas on the top and bottom that normally are not present (or are MUCH smaller) with a normal DVD.

My question is can this be corrected without harming the video quality? How would I do this?

[Hardcoreruss]

What is your EXACT conversion method and the specifics of your source file

[CaptainC]

it sounds as if you have a 4:3 cropped rip there, try to set the TV to 4:3 aspect, the picture will look more full in the screen with smaller bands at the top and bottom, if its the case the 16:9 setting will stretch an already cropped picture making it appear as a small strip rather than a wider one you could try resizing but its not something i've tried or needed to other than that re-encoding with the right screen mode could rectify but at the cost of possible quality.

[CaptainC]

my answer above is made on the preface that it is an original copy and that you haven't re-encoded or that it may have been re-encoded prior to downloading. if you have re-encoded you need to set the aspect ratio to 16:9 when encoding to view on 16.9 screen or read the tutorials as there are many ways of achieving the right aspect when playing on various TV's. But i assume that the encoding has been done already when you downloaded it.