TVs with resizable picture?

[Darwinsterrier]

Hi folks, newbie here, hoping someone may know...?

We are considering replacing / upgrading our TV (an older 60 inch Sony). But the one thing I would really like to find -- if such a thing exists -- is a set that has the facility to resize the picture. Not the usual 4:3 / 16:9 / stretch type thing, but make the displayed image smaller for some sources.

A 60 inch screen is great for blu-ray movies, but older TV programmes were simply not filmed at a high enough resolution (eg my DVDs of Attenborough's original Life on Earth, shot, iirc, on 16mm film). These things were only intended for a small screen, and so don't have the resolution to withstand being blown up onto a modern huge screen, so the image is too mushy. Let alone the loads of DVDs I have that I recorded off air, rare old programmes etc, which at 60 inch size are unwatchable.

Now, of course we could have two sets, a smaller one for what hint that kind of thing, but that's now exactly practical in a domestic setting! So what I'm wondering is, has any manufacturer come up wit an adjustable screen size? If a set can put black borders left and right for 4:3 presentation, surely it's possible to have a smaller image displayed? It would also be useful for things like YouTube videos, which again are often fine on an iPad-size screen but hopeless when streamed from pad to set.

Any ideas please?!

[Cornucopia]

You are wrong about 16mm and former shooting methods. Other than shows that were shot strictly on video, the quality of the many former shows could be improved with an improved, remastered transfer. Super16mm and 35mm have more than enough inherent definition to fully accommodate HD screens (assuming pristine masters).
Plus, analysis of made-for-tv movies does not show a completely small/close-up cinematographic style. There is a whole spectrum.

Afa the screen expanding/contracting, NO. Hasn't happened, won't happen. Not enough interest, niche market, further declining. And those who are purists would just have dedicated SD monitors alongside HD and/or UHD.

However, your premise is wrong. There are plenty of sets out there that allow for 1:1 pixel presentation mode. So an SD image will apprear in the center of the screen padded on all 4 sides, but at the same dpi as the HD screen-filling material would.

And you may have another option: projection.

Scott

[johnmeyer]

I do media restoration for a living, so I view a LOT of old movies as well as consumer video, all the way down to the horrible 1980s VHS recorded in LP mode. Here's my take:

Really bad video is going to look really bad, even if you shrink it down.

However ...

A good, modern TV (or player) should have advanced upscaling. While there is no magic involved that will make SD look like HD, you usually get a pretty decent improvement that makes the viewing experience much better. Your older set probably didn't have this, or if it did, the technology was rudimentary.

So my advice is to pay attention to the upscaling technology and to do some research on the AVS Forum site to get recommendations on the best up-scaling TV set.

Finally, because of how some cable providers deliver their SD signal, the older SD sometimes is already shrunk. With my provider (AT&T Uverse), many SD programs arrive "pre-shrunk," just like you describe, with black all away around. Having experienced that, I most definitely would not recommend it. Put another way, "be careful what you ask for, because you might just get it."

[orsetto]

A 60 inch screen is great for blu-ray movies, but older TV programmes were simply not filmed at a high enough resolution (eg my DVDs of Attenborough's original Life on Earth, shot, iirc, on 16mm film). These things were only intended for a small screen, and so don't have the resolution to withstand being blown up onto a modern huge screen, so the image is too mushy. Let alone the loads of DVDs I have that I recorded off air, rare old programmes etc, which at 60 inch size are unwatchable.

This is EXACTLY what I keep warning my older friends about as they begin their long-delayed migration from a 27" Sony Trinitron to a modern flat screen HDTV. Nearly every such person becomes enthralled with the idea of jumping to a 60 inch screen because "they're finally CHEAP nowadays". I can't get it thru their heads that swapping a 27" CRT for a 60" HDTV at the same viewing distance of 8 feet is going to A) be mentally disconcerting and unpleasant when watching the typical news show, sitcom, or commercial break and B) look utterly disgusting with their old VHS and early DVDs. But nobody wants to hear it: they accuse me of wanting to spoil their new adventure. Then they buy the thing, and come crying back to me that they should have listened.

In my opinion, one needs to accurately evaluate their personal viewing habits before deciding on a HDTV flat screen size. If you primarily view sports, BluRay discs, and HD feeds of current drama series, then you can go to a gargantuan screen size without looking back. But if you still record to dvds, have a huge library of older commercial DVDs and VHS (or VHS converted to digital), watch a lot of sitcoms or nostalgia "retro TV" channels, think twice, then think again: 32" is about the largest you'll want to go for a lot of that material when viewed from the normal sofa position in an urban apartment. Aside from the magnification factor, flat screens are optimized for native HDTV sources: what looks great on a 27" Trinitron looks dramatically worse on a 27" flat screen. The new OLED screen technology approaches CRT compatibility with SD sources, but OLED is still very expensive. In another couple years, as prices get more affordable, OLED will be a boon to connoisseurs of older SD programs. But today? It pays to restrain yourself to a reasonable screen size.

Now, of course we could have two sets, a smaller one for what hint that kind of thing, but that's now exactly practical in a domestic setting!

My friends and family fall into two camps. The majority wouldn't notice differences in picture quality if their lives depended on it: they sit four feet away from a 55" screen and watch recordings from their DVR at the slowest bitrate with no complaint. Their minds respond to one trigger: the huge screen size thrills them, everything else is secondary. The minority group is like me: we DO notice differences in PQ, they DO annoy us, so we compromise. We either drop down a notch or two from our preferred screen size to have a single universal display for everything, or we split the duties among two screens: a huge one for the family room, and a 27" for the bedroom or spare rooms. High Def sources are viewed on the big screen, low res on the smaller screens in another room. I've seen some homes with a dual-screen arrangement in the same room: huge screen on the wall, and a smaller one underneath concealed in a cabinet.

because of how some cable providers deliver their SD signal, the older SD sometimes is already shrunk. With my provider (AT&T Uverse), many SD programs arrive "pre-shrunk," just like you describe, with black all away around. Having experienced that, I most definitely would not recommend it. Put another way, "be careful what you ask for, because you might just get it."

Agreed: Time Warner Cable started doing this a couple years ago with nearly all material that was originally filmed in 4:3 aspect ratio (such as classic movies on TCM), and its REALLY annoying if one wants to archive in SD (say, to a dvd recorder) because the archive ends up shrunken windowboxed instead of genuine 4:3 centered in 16:9. The off-air broadcast networks have begun doing this as well, which has ruined the workaround of recording SD via an accessory ATSC tuner. It must streamline their own workflow (instead of having to alternate AR to suit each program, they just lock the entire delivery system into full-time 16:9, which letterboxes/windowboxes the SD outputs and unnecessarily squeezes 4:3 anamorphically on the HD outputs). It drives me up the wall that "the new normal" is ABC broadcasting native 4:3 shows like the old Peanuts holiday specials in a squeezed anamorphic (distorted square) frame, requiring a 16:9 TV to stretch it back to normal 4:3 with black bars on the sides. Heaven help the poor folks still using old 4:3 CRT televisions: they've been rendered almost unusable by such distortions. I suppose the reasoning behind it is to simplify everything to always be anamorphic, but it really screws with the small minority of us still archiving in analog SD.

[mazinz]

A 60 inch screen is great for blu-ray movies, but older TV programmes were simply not filmed at a high enough resolution (eg my DVDs of Attenborough's original Life on Earth, shot, iirc, on 16mm film). These things were only intended for a small screen, and so don't have the resolution to withstand being blown up onto a modern huge screen, so the image is too mushy. Let alone the loads of DVDs I have that I recorded off air, rare old programmes etc, which at 60 inch size are unwatchable.

This is EXACTLY what I keep warning my older friends about as they begin their long-delayed migration from a 27" Sony Trinitron to a modern flat screen HDTV. Nearly every such person becomes enthralled with the idea of jumping to a 60 inch screen because "they're finally CHEAP nowadays". I can't get it thru their heads that swapping a 27" CRT for a 60" HDTV at the same viewing distance of 8 feet is going to A) be mentally disconcerting and unpleasant when watching the typical news show, sitcom, or commercial break and B) look utterly disgusting with their old VHS and early DVDs. But nobody wants to hear it: they accuse me of wanting to spoil their new adventure. Then they buy the thing, and come crying back to me that they should have listened.

In my opinion, one needs to accurately evaluate their personal viewing habits before deciding on a HDTV flat screen size. If you primarily view sports, BluRay discs, and HD feeds of current drama series, then you can go to a gargantuan screen size without looking back. But if you still record to dvds, have a huge library of older commercial DVDs and VHS (or VHS converted to digital), watch a lot of sitcoms or nostalgia "retro TV" channels, think twice, then think again: 32" is about the largest you'll want to go for a lot of that material when viewed from the normal sofa position in an urban apartment. Aside from the magnification factor, flat screens are optimized for native HDTV sources: what looks great on a 27" Trinitron looks dramatically worse on a 27" flat screen. The new OLED screen technology approaches CRT compatibility with SD sources, but OLED is still very expensive. In another couple years, as prices get more affordable, OLED will be a boon to connoisseurs of older SD programs. But today? It pays to restrain yourself to a reasonable screen size.

Now, of course we could have two sets, a smaller one for what hint that kind of thing, but that's now exactly practical in a domestic setting!

My friends and family fall into two camps. The majority wouldn't notice differences in picture quality if their lives depended on it: they sit four feet away from a 55" screen and watch recordings from their DVR at the slowest bitrate with no complaint. Their minds respond to one trigger: the huge screen size thrills them, everything else is secondary. The minority group is like me: we DO notice differences in PQ, they DO annoy us, so we compromise. We either drop down a notch or two from our preferred screen size to have a single universal display for everything, or we split the duties among two screens: a huge one for the family room, and a 27" for the bedroom or spare rooms. High Def sources are viewed on the big screen, low res on the smaller screens in another room. I've seen some homes with a dual-screen arrangement in the same room: huge screen on the wall, and a smaller one underneath concealed in a cabinet.

because of how some cable providers deliver their SD signal, the older SD sometimes is already shrunk. With my provider (AT&T Uverse), many SD programs arrive "pre-shrunk," just like you describe, with black all away around. Having experienced that, I most definitely would not recommend it. Put another way, "be careful what you ask for, because you might just get it."

Agreed: Time Warner Cable started doing this a couple years ago with nearly all material that was originally filmed in 4:3 aspect ratio (such as classic movies on TCM), and its REALLY annoying if one wants to archive in SD (say, to a dvd recorder) because the archive ends up shrunken windowboxed instead of genuine 4:3 centered in 16:9. The off-air broadcast networks have begun doing this as well, which has ruined the workaround of recording SD via an accessory ATSC tuner. It must streamline their own workflow (instead of having to alternate AR to suit each program, they just lock the entire delivery system into full-time 16:9, which letterboxes/windowboxes the SD outputs and unnecessarily squeezes 4:3 anamorphically on the HD outputs). It drives me up the wall that "the new normal" is ABC broadcasting native 4:3 shows like the old Peanuts holiday specials in a squeezed anamorphic (distorted square) frame, requiring a 16:9 TV to stretch it back to normal 4:3 with black bars on the sides. Heaven help the poor folks still using old 4:3 CRT televisions: they've been rendered almost unusable by such distortions. I suppose the reasoning behind it is to simplify everything to always be anamorphic, but it really screws with the small minority of us still archiving in analog SD.

I am still on a crt TV though an hd 32" Samsung is upstairs. On Verizon I have their HD/dvr box so if I want to watch a show properly I just view the HD channel and I get the proper displayed letterbox on my crt. Viewing the sd version of the channel the pic is zoomed in on the 16x9 creating a dead center view with crap missing from the sides, though a show like jeaopardy still looks fine and displays 4:3 full screen as it should.
PS: thanks for more info on OLED. A bestbuy rep I was speaking with a few months back was very much looking forward to the oled screen/lighting.


For the original poster - I am like you in that the majority of material I have here is SD. If you still go with a giant screen, the cheap Philips DVD player dvp2800 deck offered a 3 or 4 stage zoom in as well as a zoom out. Cost $30 at target stores and newest version is hdmi. Also can be made region free easily. That may help your situation a little bit but be prepared for lots of black space on all sides

[lingyi]

Are you Video_John in disguise? j/K!

He was the original poster in this recent thread https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/381260-Do-480p-videos-look-any-better-on-higher-res...40#post2466540 that asked the same questions you have.

I highly recommend doing what he did, take some videos that you have questions about to the store and compare them yourself. Keep in mind that the store displays are almost certainly set to the brightest, sharpest, most color saturated settings to attract viewers in the overly bright artifical lighting of the store. Hopefully you'll be able to play with the settings and see what you like and don't like.

Most HDTVs have numerous settings (sometimes hidden from the casual viewer) that can customize your picture to whatever you like. You can usually have multiple switchable settings for each input so you can set it for HD or SD as you choose.


Personally, I'll take a little grain or noise over an overly processed picture. I can't watch more than a few minutes of channels like MeTV that overly process old TV shows for the HDTV generation.

[lingyi]

-Double Post-

[lingyi]

A possible side effect of resizing your image to a smaller size is that some people (especially those who do their viewing in an overly bright room) are distracted and annoyed by the black bars onscreen. Note that Video_John's solution was to get a smaller screen (48" vs 60").

[cornemuse]

You could just move away (waaay back) from the tv, if you have the room, , , ,