HDTV TS file playback in VLC: White line at bottom. Help?

Archived from groups: alt.tv.tech.hdtv (More info?)

Got my hands on a few sample TS files of HDTV material at 720p and
1080i. I quickly discovered that:

Windows Media Player 6.4 quickly chokes and exits.
Windows Media Player 8.whatever quickly chokes and reports an error.
VLC 0.7.2 plays them fine, although it defaults with the audio off
and also reserves the bottom of the screen for displaying a thin
black bar with a white line.

Now, the thing that may be throwing a monkey wrench into the works
is the fact that I am displaying this material on a 1365x768 (16:9)
device. VLC may have undocumented issues with that. But I would
like to suspect that the knowledgable folks in this newsgroup have
figured out ways of playing back HDTV TS files with the PC on a
16:9 display device, without annoying / dangerous (burn-in)
artifacts like the above-referenced white line.

Anyone have any advice? Thanks!