but I still don't understand why, on MULTIPLE TV/DVD players I get such an intense crop on all sides. I've burned many DVD's (granted all HD video) and never had this problem....
As i wrote, *all* televisions crop the picture and it is called overscanning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overscan
On the screendumps you posted i can see just by glancing on them that the text are placed to close the the right edge and will thus be cropped by the television. Note that the space between the video and the bottom background is cropped out as well. No video is cropped by Encore, unless you scale down HD to SD. But then *only* the top and bottom will be cropped by default. The other DVD's must have had their text placed within the Title Safe area or the Action Safe Area. CRT televisions overscan more than LCD/plasma televisions.
When creating menus or video with text, always place the text within the Title Safe area. If you don't, the text will be cropped out. This is as important when it comes to video content, iow placing a man's/woman's head too far to the left/right/top/bottom will crop parts of the head out. (Such as the womans face in your screen dump that are almost gone from the television.)
Rock on from there! 