Hello,
I recently spoke to someone who has a dvd player but not a widescreen tv and he said that when he plays certain movies the picture appears to be flawed. He descibed it as " smooshed" Can anyone shed some light on this? can you enjoy a dvd player without a widescreen tv?

All DVD layers have a menu function that allows you to specify the shape of your TV -- 4:3 (standard) or 16:9 (widescreen). Your friend has a 4:3 TV but has his player set on 16:9. Whenever he plays an anamorphically enhanced DVD, it will appear slightly 'squeezed'. (This would normally be unsqueezed by a 16:9 TV and provide added resolution.) By setting the DVD player to 4:3, it will automatically convert anamorphic DVDs to the proper size and will display in the correct letterbox dimensions for a 4:3 TV. (Check the manual for access to this setup menu, which should also allow you to set languages and parental lock.)

The fact that some DVDs appear 'smooshed' and some don't is because not all DVDs are anamorphically enhanced, and therefore do not have a 'smooshed' version on the disc. The back of the disc case should advertise whether the disc is anamorphic (i.e., "enhanced for 16:9 televisions") or not.

I was under the impression that if you have a 4:3 TV and have your DVD player set to 16:9, then the picture on an anamorphic DVD will looked stretched not "smooshed".

The only way I have seen a picture "smooshed" is when I am using the vertical compression function on a non-anamorphic DVD.

If you don't have the vertical compression (16:9 enhanced) option on your 4:3 TV, your DVD player should be set to 4:3.