I have a HD DVR and TV hooked up to a Panasonic DVD burner

[tcory]

and say watching a footaball game that I recorded on my HD DVR... the picture is awesome, but when I burn it to a DVD it has the black bars running across the screen from left to right on the top and bottom. There is probably not away to do it, but I would like to know if there is a way to burn the same quality picture as I see on the play back of the DVR ? I wish they would come out with a HD Standalone Burner. Probably cost a thousand or two dollars.

[yoda313]

Your best option is to get a hauppauge hd pvr for your computer. It is about 200.00 usd and records via component cables and 5.1 audio via fiber optic. It records in widescreen and surround sound into h264 video in either m2ts, ts, or mp4 containers. It is really excellent but requires your computer to be within cable length of your hd dvr during capturing.

The next option is you might be able to get widescreen out over analog if you use svideo cables. That might be on by default on your particular model. It might not.

Another option is to take your recorded dvds and reauthor them into 16:9 so that they properly fill the screen.

Your last option that is probably the cheapest and easiest is to use the zoom function on your hdtv. Most hdtvs have a fill option to properly enlarge letterboxed videos (the 1.78 or 2.35:1 videos that are the most common that are letterboxed - 1.78 for most comedies, tv shows, and comedy/romance movies - 2.35:1 is for most action movies, blockbusters like avatar, Star Trek and Star Wars, LOTR etc). This way when you watch your recorded dvds you don't have to do anything to them except zoom in the tv properly while playing them so nothing is cropped off.