On a black bars related topic, I've noticed that playing a DVD I made that's anamorphic 2.35:1 on a 4:3 screen so the player squishes the picture, the black bars above and below are grey and black (!) the grey area is outside the 16:9 image (the area the player doesn't use while squashing the anamorphic picture) whilst the black area is inside the 16:9 image (the encoded black bars).

Anyone got any clues as to why? commercial 2.35:1 DVDs don't appear to exhibit the same grey bars behavior.