Watching widescreen DVD movies is clearly one of the benefits of owning a widescreen TV. Together, you no longer have to stare at those gigantic black bars at the top and bottom of a traditional TV when you watch a widescreen movie. Like most electronic devices, DVD players may not work properly with your TV using out of the box settings. Properly configuring your DVD player is essential for proper playback on a widescreen TV. Nearly all movies on DVD are available in their original widescreen ratio, so proper setup significantly impacts the performance of the majority of films you will watch.

DVD players have distinct settings for displaying widescreen DVD movies on a widescreen television. These settings dictate how the DVD player will send the picture information to the TV. If the wrong setting is selected you'll not only suffer a loss of detail in your picture, but will have big black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.

The configuration settings are located inside the DVD player's setup menu. How to access the setup menu will vary from DVD player to DVD player. Refer to your owner's manual on how to access the DVD player setup menu. Once you have accessed the menu, look for an option that refers to TV type or shape of TV. This option will have choices in the form of a ratio (such as 4:3), or a shape (like "wide").

If you are a widescreen TV owner, choose the option that says 16:9, or Wide. When the proper setting is selected, widescreen DVD movies will fill most, if not all of your TV screen. You'll also get a picture quality boost from movies that were designed or enhanced for widescreen TVs. DVDs not produced this way will get no image quality enhancement, but they only make up a minority of the available widescreen DVDs.

To find out which types of movies will fit your screen, refer to the article How various DVD aspect ratios will appear on your TV screen.