I am recording in widescreen mode with my optura 50 I bought last week and when I play it back on my 4:3 tv it squeezes the video horizantally so everyone in the video looks tall and skinny. 16:9 looks better, gives me a wider field of view, and uses the entire chip. So how do I get it to play back on my TV with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen?

Unfortunately that's just the nature of anamorphic 16:9. It squeezes the widescreen image to fit the standard 720x480 frame. Unless your TV has a 16:9 mode then it will look squashed as you note. However, if you burn your video to a properly created anamorphic DVD, then the DVD player itself will provide the widescreen letterbox with black bars above and below.

But aside from that.... maybe its time to get that plasma screen you're been thinking about ;-)

When you record 16:9 video, its designed to play back on a 16:9 Television - which expands the "squished" video to fill the entire frame. If you wish to display your content on a 4:3 tv, you'll need to encode your video to anamorphic 16:9 DVD. DVD players will automatically detect the anamorphic flag and add letterboxing to the video.

www.philipwilliams.com

Dang this group is fast.. I'm still typing away and Boyd already posted!

You could also just run the footage through your editing software which hopefully supports 16:9, then export that footage back to your camera. Doing this you get the great look of 16:9 and the ability to watch it on a tv.