HDTV suggestions

[Ashley Weed]

Originally Posted by squirrel

Thats an interesting question. Seems that right now TV is in a transition to the widescreen format, and everything is a mess! SDTV is 4:3, HDTV is 16:9, and as a result of both systems being used at the same time, it's confusing.

I personally don't like scrolling text, and having the ability to crop off the top and bottom of a 4:3 picture on a widescreen set is nice. But if you want to see the full width of a widescreen video on a 4:3 screen, then you end up with the little letterbox.

Right now we have 2 TVs in the living room, one is a 4:3 32" and the other is a 16:9 42", both have similar vertical size, but widescreen shows look much better on the wide screen, and normal old TV looks "right" on the small screen.

And my wife and I have different ideas about which way to watch which shows, there is a lot of personal preference involved. For exmaple, I'd just as soon watch the old TV shows on the widescreen and zoom in and lose the top and bottom, and she's ok watching widescreen movies in the letterbox on the narrow TV.

I know our TV allows you to choose between the ratio you want to display in.

I have the benefit of having both the HD channel and the SD channel. If I decide one is not displaying how I think it is 'correct' I just switch to the other channel to get rid of "squashed heads"