Widescreen tv=widescreen movie still have black on top & bottom

Sorry, you didn't provide enougb information for anyone to accurately answer your question. The most important thing you omiited was the nature of your video source. If anyone does answer this, I assure you it will be a wild guess. Here's my wild guess:

Your HDTV has a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9. For every 16 units of width, there are 9 units of height. That ratio matches the exact ratio used in widescreen television broadcasting. However, most feature films (movies) on DVD have an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 or even wider than that. These films will display with horizontal black bars at the top and the bottom, so that you can see the full image. Unless you choose to use one of your TV or your DVD player's options to zoom or crop the image, the bars are 'correct' and there's nothing wrong.

Another possibility is that you have not configured your video source, such as a DVD player, to 'know' that you have a widescreen TV. Nearly all DVD players ship configured to output using a NON-widescreen aspect ratio, so you must adjust this setting using your player's setup menu. The same is true for most cable boxes and satellite receivers.

Finally, just because your TV is widescreen, the video source itself may not be. Most standard-definition broadcasts are NOT widescreen, for example.

If you re-post your question with adequate information about which video source exhibits this problem, I'm sure you will get much more specific and helpful answers.

Change screen settings

The answer to your question is : if the movie or program is "letterboxed" "widescreened" or "cinama scope" you will have a band at the bottom and top exactly like the band at the bottom and top at the movie theater. A lot of movies are "pan and scan" that is it is dubbed from film to video tape by a camara that pans a square picture from the area inside the letter box so you miss parts on the right or left as it scans where the people or action is and cant scan it all or it would have a black band again at the top and bottom.

One of the more common issues on older Akai plasma sets is the surface mount resistors on the ribbon cables that connect to the lower address boards. They often develop cracks in the solder rendering them basically as open thus giving a black strip. Unless you have any knowledge in electronic repairs it is best to leave this to qualifies personel to repair since those ribbon cables are very fragile and once broken will require the replacement of the plasma panel itself.