We shot some footage with the Canon XL2 in the 16:9 ratio, and edited it using Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5

After we made a dvd with this footage in 16:9, it did not show up on the tv as 16:9; it steched it to fit the screen.

I've read in various places that a 'non-widescreen' tv can't play widescreen footage from the camera, but don't you think it should wrok if its being played from the dvd?

Any other professionally made dvd that has a widescreen format will play in widescreen on this same tv.

Is there something that I'm missing when I make the dvd?

Any help would be appreciated!

-Lon

What software did you use to author the DVD?
There should be an option somewhere in the authoring project to desginate the DVD as being in 16:9 format instead of 4:3.

With this option properly set, your DVD player should recognize the DVD as widescreen and use it's own configuration settings to run playback the the proper aspect ratio for your TV like other 16:9 DVDs.

Nick is right, the authoring software should flag it so the DVD player properly letterboxes the images for display on a 4:3 set. I produce DVDs almost exclusively in 16:9 and they play back on any screen properly... maybe if your DVD player is very old, it may not have the proper code running to recognize the flag.

Besides authoring in 16:9 you also need to enable the 16:9 flag
when encoding the MPEG-2 files!

Do rented/bought 16:9 dvds play ok?
Something that has come up before is if the dvd player is set correctly. The monitor type in the player setup should be set to 4:3 LB.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41952

Cheers