Page 1 of New to DVD discs and needing to know the truth!!

As i am in the process of purchasing my first dvd player, i decided to price up the discs and there features.

The one thing i can get my head around, is the screen sizes.

Most new dvds in the shops say "Widescreen presentation" on the front and on the back have 1.1:85 or something like that.
What does this indicate, does this mean that they will not work on my 4:3 tv, or they will, but not properly.

If they are the widescreen versions, then is there a normal version of the discs that i should be buying.

Please help and rescue me from this confusion situation!

Thanx Tricky

P.S If anybody is interested, i am purchasing the Pionner DV535 multi-region dvd player from HED very cheap £188.99 (thats if it ever comes back in stock)

All DVDs should work with your tv if the player is correctly set up for a 4:3 tv. The difference will be how wide the black bars are at the top and bottom of the screen. On a 1.85 movie, the bars will be 1/4 ish of the screen (remember you will be seeing all of the film image, the black bars aren`t hiding anything). On 2.35 it will be more like half the screen is picture information. If you don`t like black bars, you will have to get a widescreen tv, but you will still get narrow bars on 2.35 films even on a widescreen tv. It`s a fact of life. There are a few movies available in "pan and scan" format (like VHS tapes), but although the picture fills the screen top to bottom, you lose up to half the original image off the sides of the screen.

Thank you for your reply to my question.

You where more helpful than all the in-store helpers at a lot of the big electronic companies.