I just got my Oppo player delivered today, and am pretty impressed so far. There's just one problem, and I'm hoping someone that's had the same situation can help me out.

I've got a 36" 4:3 Sony HDTV (KV-36HS420). I set the Oppo up to Normal/LB for the TV type, and then set the DVI to 720p or 1080i, and the menus on the Oppo appear just fine. However, when I put in an anamorphic disc, the picture is "squished", for lack of a better word. If I change the TV type on the Oppo to Wide, or Wide/SQZ, everything looks normal, but then when I play something 4:3, it has the bars on the sides.

Is this something I'm just going to have to live with? And just switch the TV type back to Normal/LB, and change back to 480p when I want to watch something that's 4:3 (TV shows, old movies, etc.). Or is there some setting I'm not setting up correctly with either the TV or the Oppo.

I tried to look through the thread on avs, but it's 400 pages long, and I couldn't find the answer to my problem doing a search.

Thanks in advance.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you using Sony's anamorphic squeeze feature? That is a known problem, over squeezing the picture. You would be better off just letting the Oppo generate the bars for a more accurate ratio.

Yes, I was letting Sony squeeze the 4:3 image, so that the aspect ratio would be correct. But if it's a 4:3 image, and I'm on a 4:3 set, I'd rather it just use all the available space. Unfortunately, it looks like Sony 4:3 sets always display in 16:9 while in 720p or 1080i, according to someone over at avsforum. So it looks like I'll have to switch back to 480p when watching 4:3 material.

I'm not sure if you misunderstodo what I said (I think so). The Sony itself does NOT squeeze to the proper ratio, it over-squeezes.