I recently discovered that the capture utility inside of Premiere Pro does an excellent job of displaying DV over the firewire connection in real time--full motion, sharp as a tack, and in proper aspect ratio (i.e. 16:9). I'd like to do something like this on my mini-laptop (which has an excellent screen for this purpose), so I can use it as a field monitor.

However I cant size the capture window to full screen in Premiere and I'd rather not install the full Premiere app just to display the video feed over the firewire link.

Does anyone know of a (Windows based) display or capture utility that will work for me? It needs to preview video over firewire, show 16:9 properly, be full screen, and be at least as sharp as the on camera display. I dont care if its not quite full frame rate as I would use it for framing and focus. I dont need capture, just display. Movie Maker wont do this.

I would not resize to fullscreen. Why? because you are doing
interpolation then. Which results in a different image basically.
You need to see the feed as is, not through another filter.

true.

i was thinking that you could lower your screen resolution to 720x480 (use powerstrip to create a custom resolution) and then you'd see it 1:1

however laptops are lcd's and in that they only have *one* native resolution (which is usually 1024x768 or 1280x1024) so this wouldn't be a good solution either as the monitor does its own interpolation.

Good point about losing resolution on full screen upsizing.

I'm trying to use the Sony TR3a, which has the following screen "10.6" Wide (1280x768) TFT display with XBRITE technology ." The screen is extra wide and amazingly good -- very bright but with deep dark blacks. Its not like other laptop or DVD player screens that are all washed out. Of course its also extra wide. It also doesnt hurt that the whole PC is tiny and weighs only 3 lbs. I'll fiddle around with the resolution settings. The Premiere cap program works, but I can only get about 50% screen coverage with it.

Stick to that Bill. Rob H. has another good point on lower
resolution of the screen. It will interpolate up again. Just stick
with 50% screen.

Try using Scenalyzer (http://www.scenalyzer.com), it allows you to resize the preview window to any size you want. onne thing you will find though is that unless your mini-laptop has a fast processor/plenty of RAM your real-time playback may suffer.