At the weekend I decided to use a few years old JVC DVD player (XV-N212) to watch a DVD.

I have a Sharp 32" HD tv connected to it. The picture being output on screen was a small square rather that the picture filling the 32" screen.

The DVD player still works in good order even if nearly 7 years old, but how do I get the picture to fill the screen? I don't want to buy a spanky brand new blu-ray player

How have you got the DVD player configured?

It's possible it's set to output to a 4:3 TV instead of a 16:9 TV and may be letterboxing the movie into a 4:3 frame. Which would look decidedly odd on a 16:9 screen!

If you configure the player to output to a 16:9 TV then it should fill the entire width of the screen at least. There are likely to be bars top and bottom if the movie is in a wider than 16:9 format but that is perfectly normal.

The DVD I was watching was a couple of episodes of Death In Paradise series one

Same principle applies. If the player is set up to output a 4:3 signal and letterbox anything other than a 4:3 image then it will display as a small rectangle in the middle of the screen. Death in Paradise was available on BBC HD so is very likely to be 16:9. Therefore letterboxing that into a 4:3 frame would produce two thick bars left and right and thinner ones top and bottom.

If you change the TV Type setting (or whatever JVC call it) in the player's set up menu to 16:9 then that should sort it.