If the film you're watching on your laptop is too wide to fit, and you want to zoom in on the movie in DVD Player, there's a nice slider for it in menu Window » Video Zoom. In QuickTime Player, however, there's only an option to completely zoom in, cutting out a lot of the movie on both sides. So if you want a compromise between those two views, do it this way:
- Zoom in on the movie by first dragging it over to the left side of the screen, and then resizing it by dragging the lower right corner.
- Play the movie by choosing View » Present Movie, and choosing Present at: Current Size from the onscreen dialog.
The movie keeps the current zoom level, cutting only some portions on the sides.