This has been puzzling me for a while now. I tend to record things on the HDD in SP mode, and widescreen recordings high-speed dubbed to DVD remain as widescreen, as they should.

However, if I lower the quality when I dub them, it goes into real-time mode. The picture on the TV is still widescreen, but the resulting file on the DVD isn't flagged as such!

I'm using DVD-Rs, and I've tried various quality settings below SP (all above the threshold for reduced resolution according to the manual), and they always come out as 4:3 (16:9 squashed into a 4:3 frame)

Is there any way to fix this?

I bought a Sony HDX890 recently (it was a display model).
I found exactly the same problem.
If you have a computer with a DVD burner there is a solution.
Place the disk with the wrong aspect ratio video in the drive and copy the complete VIDEO_TS folder from the DVD into a folder on the computer HDD using windows copy.
Download and install “ImgBurn” (its free).
Download http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multime...IfoAR2WS.shtml
Copy this file into the DVD folder on the HDD, (not the VIDEO_TS folder).
Run IfoAR2WS to change the aspect ratio.
Copy the modified VIDEO_TS folder to a blank disk using ImgBurn.
The DVD will now play with an aspect ratio of 16:9 instead of 4:3.
I hope this helps.
Rob

Thanks, I've seen these sorts of workarounds before (to fix a similar problem on the GXD500 where certain quality levels or disc types would never get a WS flag), but they're a bit of a pain and it is easier just to hit the aspect ratio button on the TV when realising it is in squashy-vision (can be helped by adding 16:9 or 4:3 text to the programme title).

I've taken to recording everything in slightly lower quality (SEP IIRC), which allows usual 6-episode series to fit onto one disc without having to adjust the quality OTF. This greatly reduces the chance I'd need to reduce the quality further, and SEP has a bitrate which still exceeds the majority of Freeview broadcasts so the picture doesn't look any worse anyway!

I agree it is a pain, but I find that I do not need to do it very often.
It is a pity that Sony (Pioneer) did not give a set-up menu so that it was possible to set the aspect ratio, as was the case in my old Toshiba RD-XS32.
I mainly like to keep old films that are shown on Channel 4 in the afternoon and they fit into 2hrs in the SP mode.
I like the upscaler of the HDX890 as I find that SP looks excellent on my TV.