If you're ripping a DVD, you have to keep in mind the resolution and aspect ration for DVD's. That's 720x480 (aspect ration of 1.5). Your SGT is 1280x800 (aspect ration of 1.6). In addition, many DVD's are already showing the movie in a "letter box". So, you can see the result is going to be a picture that is smaller than you might expect.
One solution is to use a ripping program that allows you to "zoom" the picture and clip off the left and right edges of the movie. I haven't used Handbrake in a long time, so I don't know if it has that option
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I have been using Slysoft's DVDmobile and have been getting decent results.
DVDmobile has 2 levels of zoom. Unfortunately, it's not free