Widescreen DVD Playback on a Computer VS HDTV

[foochuck]

I was presenting a widescreen DVD 16:9 to my client yesterday.

They have a HDTV hooked up to a computer.

The presentation didn't fill up the screen (they were playing it back on Windows Media Player).

They want it to fill up the screen so I suggested hooking up a DVD player to the HDTV and playing the DVD from that.

Now if they use the DVD player, I'll have to worry about the Safe Area - as opposed to playing it back from a computer and not having to worry about the Safe Area, is this correct?

Is there any way to play it back from the computer and get it to be full screen on an HDTV? I'm guessing they could just lower the resolution of the computer's settings and the DVD would fill up the screen.

Any suggestions?

[guns1inger]

If you connect via the VGA connector and tell the computer that the screen is the monitor, it should then adjust it's available resolution to match the TV. After that it is just a simple matter to play it back like any other DVD.

Two questions do come to mind though

1. Is the aspect ratio of the image 1.78 :1 or wider ? if it is wider then it won't fill the screen completely anyway.

2. Will this ever be played on TVs ? If so, you should be taking safe areas into account. The majority of DVD videos are not played on PCs.