I'll be damned. That works great!!! It does look much better, and my
blacks fade to black, almost matching the video boarder exactly.

Now, how do I force this to happen on the receiving end of my streaming
video? Can I?

Like I mentioned earlier, that gamespot vid above could show complete
black w/o me having to manually turn of VMR. How can I ensure my
videos look good on the receiving end w/o making the viewer do anything
special?

Thanks.