Enlargement of DVD player image when DVD is played on an HDTV

Question

I am using iPhoto v. 7.1.3 and iDVD v. 7.0.2 I am trying to export a slideshow from iPhoto into iDVD and playing it as a slideshow on a 16:9 HDTV.
I have made many 16:9 DVDs of our travel pictures using iDVD but imported individual 16:9 copped images from iPhoto (99 to a slideshow) and they have all played okay on our HDTV (small black border around the entire picture, no loss in content), The downside of this approach is that one can only have 99 images per slideshow, thus, to get through all of the pictures, one must return to the opening screen several times, and navigate to other slideshows with the DVD remote.
The idea that a slideshow of any length created in iPhoto and then exported to iDVD would play continuously through all of the images appealed to me.
As a test, I created a small (10 image) 16:9 slideshow (show titles checked) in iPhoto using 16:9 cropped images each with a title. I exported it to iDVD. I created an 16:9 iDVD project, then a slideshow, and dragged the exported movie from my "Movies" folder, into the slideshow, added audio, then moved the slideshow to the gray box in the MAP (so the movie would play on insertion of the disc in a DVD player), clicked on "Professional Grade" and "Always Scale Slides to TV area" in the preferences, and saved as a disc image. When I played the resulting .img file with DVD player, it looked fine so I dropped the Video_TS file in Toast 7.1.3 and burned a disc. When I played it on the HDTV, however, the image was stretched laterally. The image completely filled the TV screen side to side (no small black border along the slides as mentioned above) and the titles in the upper left corner were partially cut off.
I also tried burning the .ing file with Disc Utility, with the same result.
Can someone spot the flaw in my procedure? I can’t understand why I can’t get the same result on my HDTV as I see in DVD player.
If you need more details, let me know.
Thank you.

Answer 1

Let me give you a 'for instance'.
When I first created a 16:9 DVD with iDVD it looked fine on my computer screen. However, when I played it in my set top DVD player the image on my TV screen wasn't letterboxed as I expected; instead it was magnified with the edges cut off. I got out my set top DVD player manual and noted that the default setting for displaying 16:9 content was 'Pan and Scan' and not 'Letterbox'. I changed my DVD player setting and all is fine.
This happens because iDVD does not set the 'Force Letterbox' flag on the disc. Some people use myDVDedit to modify an iDVD created disk image file to set the 'Force Letterbox' flag. There really isn't any right-or-wrong way to make the disc; it's a matter of personal preference (and some people would rather have the edges cut off than see b;lack bars on the top or bottom.