Qustion about 16:9 TVs - kind of Newbie Q

[mreed80]

Ok, this might be a stupid question, but I'm looking into getting a flat panel(plasma or LCD) which would be the 16:9 screen.

Now when you are watching basic TV that isn't in HDTV, it comes in at 4:3, does your picture have the black bars on the side of the picture? If this is true, and since most TV is still in 4:3, wouldn't having so much black bars on the side of the screen cause for possible screen burn in those spots?

And in regards to playing a DVD that is in widescreen format, can you get them to fit the screen naturally or will you still get the black bars on the top and bottom?

[greengate69]

Most sets have various viewing options including black bars at the sides, stretching (so everyone looks fat) to fill the screen, or zoom with the correct aspect ratio (to fill the screen), chopping a bit off the top and bottom.

As regards DVD, it depends on the aspect ratio of the DVD (16:9 will fill the screen, 2.35:1 will by default have black bars top and bottom). However the DVD player and the TV itself should give you plenty of options to find your preferred view.

[soundforbjt]

After recently purchasing my first 16:9 tv, I could never go back to 4:3. In fact I wish more monitor companies offered widescreen monitors!

[tgpo]

Using a sony widescreen TV there are three options for regular viewing. Stretch, Zoom, and Regular. The stretching really isn't that bad. In fact you can hardly tell that the image is being distorded from its original Aspect Ratio. I didn't like the Zoom. It cause everything on the screen to be cut off in some fashion and basically caused everything to look like crap. The regular placed gray bars on the left and right side of the image, to retain the original aspect ratio. It looked okay, but stretched was prefered by me.

The DVDs we poped in looked just fine. No black bars on the three we tried out, but I'm not sure of what the aspect ratio was for these movies, only that they were widescreen. I even tried a full frame DVD that I had made, and it looked great in stretch mode.

[mreed80]

Thanks everybody. I kind of assumed that I would get these kinds of responses, but I would rather ask it here rather than drive to a store and look like an idiot in front of somebody!

[Faustus]

soundforbjt: I've been dying for a widescreen PC monitor since apple revealed theirs. I dont even care if its LCD long as its at least 17 or 18 inchs and widescreen. Thanksfully Sony has answered the desire, sadly the price still holds me off from my dreams.

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