Okay, this is my first ever HDTV, first ever widescreen TV. This is the one that I have, except it 50inch: http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=315249&pfp=BROWSE I have a few questions to start off. We have not yet gotten HD cable hooked up, we just have basic cable on there at the moment. Is it normal that if i want to get picture that is not distorted (as in the dimensions) that I have to have not use all of my screen? that there are black bars on the side?... someone told me that HD cable is broadcast to fit your specific TV. Secondly... Which connections are the best? I am led to believe that component is the best, however, someone i know thinks s-video is better.. though i believe he is wrong. Third question. One major reason that i thought this TV would be great was the fact that i love widescreen DVDs. I always buy the widescreen DVDs, not the fullscreen ones. Low and behold when i popped in The Two Towers on widescreen (fully expecting it to take up the whole TV) i still had those black bars that are at the top and bottom of widescreen DVDs. I set the TV on wide mode and all it did was stretch the picture to fit across the whole TV...that basically defeats the purpose of having widescreen DVDs and a widescreen TV. I don't understand the point of having widescreen TVs in the above problems are always the case. I am a bit naive when it comes to this because this is my first widescreen TV so bear with me. I would really appreciate it if i could get some of these questions answered because i know a lot of you guys here at afterdawn are extremely knowledgable. Thank you Chris. EDIT: I tried playing XBOX on it as well thinking that it would be really cool.. sadly I noticed a slight delay in games which made it somewhat hard to play. I know that it has to be a result of the TV because the xbox works on other TVs that i have tried. The only thing i can think of is that the resolution on the TV is too high or that i need the HDTV adapter for the Xbox (i am currently using RCA connection) Also, with regard to the widescreen, is there any way to split the screen down the middle to play the xbox on the widescreen? thanks again
Wow, green horns. Well, for the first part of your first question you do want to get a HD decoder for your cable service. You will at the very least need a component conection(for 1080i) with this. As for the second part, the HD channels that are available will take advantage of you 16:9 screen. Unfortunatly, you will need to set the display with the black bars on the sides for regular channels, otherwise you will get a stretched picture. The best connections for your tv are the DVI, HDMI and PC inputs. You should invest in a DVD player which can upconvert 480p to 720p or even 1080i(need a DVI or HDMI cable). Try and avoid using the coaxial, composite and s-video inputs for any of your equipment if possible. As for the widescreen dvd movies, since you have a 16:9 display you are taking advantage of the widescreen output of the dvd's with this feature. You will come across DVDs with the original theatre aspect(lotr for example) which are even wider than 16:9 and still require the bars on the top and bottom. Some DVDs are formatted to 16:9(1.78) but, for movies like star wars or LOTR they keep the original aspect(2.35:1). The thing is DVD comes in a variety of formats including 1.33, 1.78, 1.85, 2.00, 2.35, 2.4, 2.5, and so on. So there is no universal standard for the rectangular shape of a video picture, but in my opinion it's still better to watch these on a widescreen display instead of a regular 4:3 tv(1.33). Please feel free to ask more questions. I hope I didn't confuse you even more.
