[Crusoe]

My friend has a HC90 which he records his footage in 16:9. Upon importing it to iMovie (05) to his Alum 1GHz Powerbook, 1GB Ram, plenty of HD space, the quality is severely reduced and it auto letterboxes (black on top and sides like old movies put on DVDs) everything.
We didn't have time to play around with all the project settings,
Anyone know what's going on here?
He's getting Final Cut Express (non HD) via ebay within the next few days, will that help if it's an iMovie limitation?

I'm interested in getting an HC42 but not if iMovie or some Sony control trashes the quality of 16:9 I'll have to rethink my DV plan.

[Arbernaut]

I have a similar, related question: I have a Sony cam (I'm at work so I can't tell you the model number) that records in 16:9 (not HD sadly).

Importing the footage into iMovie compresses it horizontally, but when saving back to DV tape, the image springs back to 16:9. Is any quality being lost?

Secondly, when I tried to incorporate some photos with my video footage annoyingly the resulting footage hopped around from 16:9 to 4:3 with my widescreen TV pinging about showing the 16:9 footage correctly, but the 4:3 footage with black bars on the left and right. Is there any way to FORCE iMovie to use 16:9 all the time? If not, will the new iMovie HD help? Should I look to Final Cut Express or After Effects?