I've had it happen to me, seen it happen to friends of mine, and it happened again just today. I don't get it. Ok, so I help my friend setup his new HT setup, nice 52" 1080p screen. This was about 2 days ago. Today I stop by his house to watch the Sharks game, and his wife changed the aspect ratio so 4:3 video gets stretched. WTF? Why is it only women I ever see do this? And the second you try to explain how a car driving across the screen will look like the wheels are ovals, and everyone looks like they weight 40 pounds more, the response is: "but you might as well use the whole screen, otherwise what's the point in buying a tv that big?" This isn't some uber technical nerd car mechanic sports guy guru thing, it's a matter of a circle on the screen still looking round and everyone not looking fat. Now not all women do this, but every time I've seen it happen, it's been a woman. Is there something I'm just missing here?
because women are evil. and evil will always triumph against good, because good is dumb. deal with it.
But it's not quite the same. I thought about that. "But you're missing 1/3 of the movie" is usually enough to wake up people I know who are silly enough to only buy fullscreen versions of movies, but I've seen both men and women buy fullscreen movies. And stretching a 4:3 picture to fit a 16:9 TV at least doesn't mean you're losing anything(except throwing the aspect ratio out of whack and making everything look ******ed). And in this particular case, I'm not talking about someone wanting their soap operas to fill the screen because that's all they use it for. She knows more Sharks stats off the top of her head than I do. Hell, I'd figure an attention to detail about what things look like that most guys don't give a crap about, would mean looking for accuracy, but this blows that out the window.
ya know, stretching for the sake of stretching it, doesn't make much sense. However, if you have a CRT or Plasma, always stretch the 4:3 picture to avoid burn in. My TV's are on widescreen mode all the time, whether we have a 16:9 show or a 4:3 show.
"Mommy, make it stop! My head hurts!" I gave up, ate a bullet on this with several people. I still have aneurysms when i hear, "Why do you want letterboxed? they chop off the top and bottom." (parents and my neighbors say it alot.) not if it is shown on a tv proper. can i ask you guys something since we are on TV headaches? does it bother you to watch a Pan and Scan movie? the worst and most seen example is "A League of Their Own" on TBS...when the whole image shifts to reset the center and make the actors fit the shot (since it isn't in widescreen). i don't get motion sickness from videogames or anything, but tha P&S crap unnerves me.
Thought slightly paraphrased, I believe that was Rick Moranis, playing Dark Helmet in Space Balls during his confrontation with Lone Starr, played by Bill Pulman. Random video nerd trivia there.
I can't stand P&S. I got a standard TV (want a Widescreen). But I still don't get full screen idiots.
Modern CRT is not so prone to burn in that I would ever purposely screw up the aspect ratio, let alone always.
The absolute worst I've ever seen is A Few Good Men. It actually makes me physically queasy. There's a scene early in the movie where they're riding in a Jeep. In the widescreen it's a fairly static shot of their conversation. In Pan and scan it pans back and forth so whoever is talking is on screen, but because the dialogue in the movie is pretty fast it has to pan quickly. It's like watching a tennis match where the camera is following the ball. Awful. Ghostbusters is also pretty bad. The scene in where they're walking into the hotel does make me laugh in P&S, because they can't fit all the guys in the frame. So while they're talking to the hotel manager, Egon is completely offscreen the entire time, and whenever he has dialogue it's just this disembodied voice coming from somewhere offscreen.
True Story: My wife's sister comes over every Wednesday. They watch some show on ABC all the time -Supernanny, I think. Well, I typically chastize them for not tuning into the HD station and change the channel for them. One week I tuned it into the HD channel before the show started. I came by the TV about 10 minutes later and they were watching it in SD. I asked them what the hell happened and my wife said they changed the channel and then they "couldn't figure out" how to get it back to the right channel.
On my TV you are forbidden from watching a program in SD if we have an HD channel for it. And that includes Dr. Phil!
Well, if you have a HDTV, and the show's also in HD, may as well watch it in HD. Otherwise, what's the point of having a HDTV?
