Getting rid of black bars with progressive scan dvd player

[DonGallego28]

OK I just bought a HDTV television (Panasonic CT-30WX15) and hooked it up with component cables to my progressive scan dvd player. I set up the dvd player to display things in 16:9 and progressive scan output. The question I have is that my understanding was that with progressive scan you can get rid of the black bars on the top and bottom of the screen but the only way to do that is with the Zoom aspect ratio of the tv. From reading the manual, Full mode is made for anamorphic video but when I play a dvd in that mode I still see the black bars on the top and bottom. Is the only way to get rid of it through the zoom feature? I compared the zoom to the full and it looks like the picture doesn't lose or cut anything off on the tops or sides to make it fit the screen so I assume that's the only way to watch it without the bars? Any help would be appreciated.

[guns1inger]

Don't get confused between DVD aspect ratios and movie aspect ratios. DVDs are simple beasts. They come in only two flavours 4:3 (fullscreen) and 16:9 (widescreen). Movies, on the otherhand, come in may flavours. Any movie aspect ratio between 1.33 - 1.76 will be full screen, and may have small black bars top and bottom. 1.33:1 will fill the screen completely. Widescreen movies that are encoded as anamorphic/enhanced etc will fill the whole width of your loverly new TV, but only movies with an original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 will actually fill it top to bottom. 1.85:1 (very common AR) and up (to 2.40:1) will have black bars top and bottom. 1.85 will have small bars, 2.35 or 2.40 will have much larger bars. The only way to get rid of them is to zoom in and cut the sides off. On a 2.35 or 2.40 AR movie you could cut off up to 20% or more of your image.

In short, they are meant to be there. You are not missing out on anything, and anyone who says you are is a moron.