16:9 NOT to letterbox in HDTV?

Hi,
I should be able to do this . . . and CAN'T! It's making me crazy!! We have 2 Canon XL-2 cameras. We now are shooting in 16x9. (Or we're going to - depending on this answer!!)
Bottom line - when we create a DVD in iDVD - it letterboxes perfectly when viewed on a 4x3 television. As it should! Perfect.!
BUT . . . when viewed on an HDTV, or a 16x9 television - it STILL LETTERBOXES! I thought it's NOT supposed to do that??? I thought on a widescreen television set - it should take up the full screen, because it already IS 16x9! Why letterbox it on a widescreen TV? Feels like I'm gettin' cheated on real estate space.
In FCPro, we keep timeline sequence setting to our normal default - NTSC-DV. (Someone from the Apple Store told us to set it - thru Easy Setup - to "NTSC-Anamorphic - but THAT caused all kinds of problems when imported into iDVD, so we DON'T do that. It kept the picture looking squished 4x3 in iDVD, unless we ran it thru Anamorphicizer.) The video looks perfect (widescreen) in the canvas and viewer in FCPro -
So shouldn't it look "full screen" automatically on a widescreen television, and look letterboxed on 4x3 (which it does)? Is this a setting we're supposed to set our DVD player (hooked to the TV) to? Is there a setting we're supposed to change our widescreen TV to?
Thanks - if anybody knows this simple question that we SHOULD know!
Larry
Macbook Pro 17   Mac OS X (10.4)  

Larry:
I don't know about iDVD but If you author your DVD in DVDSP and set all your tracks and menus as Display Mode: 16:9 letterbox you'll get the automatic letterbox in 4:3 TVs and full screen in 16:9 ones.
Of course your sequence setting in FCP must be adjusted to Anamorphic.
But be aware that some settings in your DVD player and TV can override those settings.
Hope that helps !
  Alberto

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