I recently bought a Philips 5960/05 DVD player but when I go to play fullscreen DVDs it displays them in widescreen even though my Panasonic TV has automatic switching. Any ideas?

Are you sure that the DVD's aren't superwide - I believe 2.35:1 as opposed to 16:9?

If this is the case, then they will show as letterboxed on a widescreen TV, and on an old square TV you'd be as well not bothering as the picture is so small!

No, that's the not the problem. It is a fullscreen ratio DVD, which the Philips player is forcing into widescreen, thus stretching the image. The same DVD disc plays in fullscreen in my DVD recorder fine.

It sounds as if you have not set the correct screen (or TV) type in the settings on the DVD player. In the video or display settings on the DVD player there should be an option for 16:9 or 4:3 TV (or the choices may be called widescreen or fullscreen). If you set that to 16:9 (widescreen), it will probably work correctly.

If that is already set to 16:9, there may be an option called something like "enable 16:9 (or widescreen or aspect ratio) switching". That should be enabled, if it exists.

There may also be an option to set video output to PAL or RGB or S-Video. This should be ideally be set to RGB with a fully wired RGB scart lead (S-Video might work, but not all TVs accept that form of widescreen setting, nor do all DVD players generate that sort of signal).

Another possibility is that you haven't connected the DVD payer to the TV via a fully wired RGB compatible Scart lead. Scart leads supplied with VCRs typically weren't fully wired, nor RGB compatible, so, if you're re-using a scart lead from an old VHS video...(Beware buying a cheap fully wired scart lead as they're often a source of interference - buy a reasonable quality fully screened one, or, better yet, one with just the RGB connections and signalling wired for one direction only. It doesn't need to cost a fortune).

Or at least one of the AV sockets you're using in either the DVD or the TV may not be compatible with RGB or there's a setting in a menu to set the input or output to RGB. If there's a second scart on the TV or the DVD, try switching them over. Usually, the scart socket labelled "AV1" is RGB compatible. AV2, AV3 etc might not be.

If your DVD player is an upscaling one, none of the above might apply as you might be connecting via HDMI, in which case widescreen switching should be automatic, but there might be an incompatibility between DVD and TV. HDMI is relatively new compared to Scart and this is a possibility.

And if all of that still doesn't work, you could manually set the TV to 4:3 from its remote as required.

Hope that helps!