I've had a Pioneer 16x9 rear projector with a 50 inch screen since 1998. Lots of great memories, but it's time to retire the "monster on wheels" as everyone used to call my TV. My new super-slim Toshiba LCD Full-HD arrives tomorrow and I'm jumping with joy. Haven't been that excited in the longest! Of course I'm switching to blu as well, which will happen in September. Can't hardly wait to explore blu-ray greatness
My father in law does that and I got reamed out by him two days ago for changing the format to 4:3 when my kids watched their new Teen Titans DVD. He's a racist asshole anyways so I'm kind of glad it him pissed off. I'll probably do it again out of spite!
I hate it when people stretch full-screen films. I mean, how can someone watch a movie that way? Everything's distorted. Everyone looks short and fat, and short and fat people look shorter and fatter. ~Matt
It's ignorance pure and simple. My in-laws think that just because they have a HD widescreen television that everything that appears on the screen is HD and meant to be widescreen. It's ridiculous. I'm usually polite to them, but when they started treating me like an idiot, it's the first time I've ever been truly snarky to them. When they asked me if I "fixed" it I responded "Well, it isn't 'fixed', but it's set up the way you want it to be." They continued to act like I didn't know what I was doing and I said, "Dave, I went to film school for 4 years and have my own show on public access. You know about guns and I know television." (My father-in-law is a gun nut with over 100 firearms in his possession.) But really, the fix was merely clicking a few buttons. If you're going to spend several hundred dollars on a TV, learn how to work the friggin' thing!
Wow. Really? Improper aspect ratio (and by that I mean something stretched to fit a screen, not pan and scan) is quite literally impossible for me to watch. At least with the advent of HD, it's becoming less common. I used to go into sports bars that had 16x9 TVs before 16x9 broadcasting became commonplace, and they all did that "wide fit" option so that it looked like shit. Still, it's amazing how many people don't even notice the difference. Even filmmakers! One of my side jobs is projection at film festivals, and a good amount of these movies are on DigiBeta tape. I have the director hand me a copy and tell me "It's 16x9, make sure you show it that way". I preview the tape and tell them, "It's not 16x9, it's 4x3 letterboxed". Only after I show them the preview monitor and the difference between 16x9 and 4x3LB do they actually see the difference.
I'd just rather see full screen movies using more of the screen than just a squarish rectangle. To me, it looks like it zooms in on the picture rather than squashing anything. The top and bottom of the picture go to the top and bottom of the screen and the left and right sides zoom out too but they don't go all the way to the screen edges in those directions. So again, to me it just looks better when watching full screen movies. The "wide fit" option isn't DVD related as it's an option in side my Samsung tv in the Picture menu.
