LG DR1F9H 1080i and full screen movies

[pajonate]

Hi, I couldn't find an answer to my problem anywhere in this forum, so I'll try it with my own topic.
I have LG DR1F9H dvd recorder, with which I am quite happy, because it reads AVIs, movies I have from Europe (region free, which Panasonic, Phillips and Samsung DVD recorders that BestBuy store sells, were not able to recognize). I found out that audio CD recorded on a computer (MAC), have to be recorded from iTunes to work with this recorder, and if you take the AIFF files from one CD (or folder) and drop them into the blank CD and try to burn it, it will not be recognizede one in the LG recorder, but on the other hand, Samsung DVD recorder did recognize those. Since I have much more European movies than audio CDs burned this way, I went with LG.
Now, after a long introduction, let me lay down my problem:
If I have a retail DVD with movie recorded in 4:3 aspect ratio (full screen), whenever I upconvert to 720p or 1080i from basic 480i or 480p, the picture stretch and fills my 16x9 LCD TV, which makes Tom Cruize to weight appx 220 pounds. I don't care that much about Tom's weight but I am concerned about the quality of the picture. I tried all the settings on the LG, and on my Sony KDL-46S2000 46" LCD HDTV, with no success. I tought that the device is faulty, so I exchange it with another one, with no success, I test the device they had in the store, I called the LG tech support, and they told me that if the TV aspect menu control is grayed out at 1080i that, that's it and nothing can be done. I found that weird. I had before this the LG player based on this recorder, or vise versa, and there it worked fine (1080i upconvert kept the aspect ratio to its original 4x3). With movies made in 16x9 1080i upconvert works fine and there is no distrotion of the image.
Tech help was very poor, there were children crying in the backgroung when I talked to thjis guy, so I don't know what's with that, but they couldn 't help me at all.

Any help on this forum?

Happy Thanksgiving Day

[edDV]

Bottom line. Use 480p, let the Sony TV do the upscale and all the Sony aspect ratio controls will be active.

If you want to use the DVD player for upscaling then you are limited to the DVD player aspect ratio features. If you do use DVD player upscale to a progressive LCD display, use 720p not 1080i.

[FulciLives]

Simple.

Do not upconvert 4:3 material via the DVD recorder. Let the TV do it. Thus the aspect ratio is preserved.

I mean that TV should have it's own up-convert "engine" built-in so you don't even really need the DVD recorder to do it at all.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
oops edDV beat me to it!