telling you to manually set your TV to 16:9. Well, my TV doesn't allow me to do that, making it useless.

*BOGGLE*

I didn't know there was a such thing. This totally surprises me.

There are enough commercial DVDs out there which are incorrectly mastered (having many different kinds of flag problems, not just the one you cited), that I can't imagine a company deliberately making a TV which doesn't let you manually set the aspect ratio.

The only example I've seen of this problem has been the exact opposite: When getting a progressive-scan signal from a DVD player, my TV is locked into widescreen mode because it treats a progressive-scan signal as if it were a high-def signal. But I can "go narrow" simply by making the DVD player work in interlaced mode.

Are you SURE there's no way to control the aspect ratio, either on the TV or the DVD player? What make/model of TV and DVD player are you using?