Change 4:3 to 16:9?

I have a movie here (already ripped in movie mode including both .ifo files). The movie is set to 4:3, but obviously it's a 16:9 (1,77:1) with hard encoded black bars. Is there any chance to get rid of the black bars and correctly set the movie to 16:9 without reencoding the vob files? Any option to change in a .ifo file? Or do I have to live with 4:3?

Not only would you need to crop it, but also resize it back to 720x576. That would introduce some degradation in itself, plus the encoding. There is nothing to be gained by doing this, as the black bars, if truly noiseless black, take very little bandwidth. And, of course, you cannot put back what has already been lost. edit: If you want it to display properly on a widescreen tv set the "letterboxed" bit in the video attributes. Bit 1 of the second byte (not bit 0 of the first byte, that's for automatic letterboxing, something altogether different)

Well, okay. I'll stay at 4:3. My only worry was to watch the movie on a 16:9 TV in the future (haven't one yet). There I'd surely have some very big black bars to the left and right? Or have 16:9 TVs a function to "zoom in"? edit: Oh, just saw your edit's comments. ;) I guess thats the point "Letterboxed (Top & Bottom cropped)" in IfoEdit when double clicking the video stream of the opened vts_xx_x.ifo? I'll stay at 4:3 as long as I don't have a widescreen TV. When I have one (when my momentary TV dies, I guess still a year or so ;) ), I just burn it once more with changed letterboxed data.

Right, the "letterboxed" attribute tells the DVD player to get rid of the black bars for a widescreen tv. If you want to have some fun, tell your DVD player you have a widescreen tv when you don't - you'll see anamorphic without bars.