[Peter J Roberts]

Just bought a new W/S laptop and it comes with a number of DVD playing software all of which work fine EXEPT Windows Media Player. My Niggel is this, while the other players allow you to tell them that they are operating on a 16:9 screen with a result that films are played with black bars at the side.

How do I fix this? As I'd like to have one piece of Software to play all media.

Originally Posted by Peter J Roberts

Just bought a new W/S laptop and it comes with a number of DVD playing software all of which work fine EXEPT Windows Media Player. My Niggel is this, while the other players allow you to tell them that they are operating on a 16:9 screen with a result that films are played with black bars at the side.

How do I fix this? As I'd like to have one piece of Software to play all media.

Couple of questions first. Is the media you are playing actually in widescreen, i.e. it has no black bars at top and bottom? Secondly are you actually running your monitor in a widescreen resolution, or a normal resolution stretched (can you tell me what resolution you have set in Display Properties, this may be different to your screens actual resolution).

I just tried setting my 4:3 monitor to 1280x768, which is widescreen and so gives me black bars at the top and bottom (unless I artificially stretch the image with the monitors controls). Then loaded up a widescreen DivX (640x272) in WMP, went to fullscreen mode and it filled the full width of the screen up with no extra black bars.