Just bought a 42" Sharp Aquos LCD HDTV, and am disappointed with a few "issues." One is that there is no an acceptable (to me and my wife) choice of viewing modes for "nomal" 4X3 TV shows. Both "Stretch" modes make most people look ludicrously fat, "zoom" cuts off the tops of their heads. And "Sidebar" puts the old black bars on the sides of the picture where, for some unknown psychological reason, they are MUCH more objectionable (to us) than the top and bottom bars on a letterboxed movie. Is there no "Variable" option that can be used? Is there no firmware mod that can be implemented to let me chose something in between the extremes (slight stretch with slight crop and small black bars, for example)? Or are we just too picky? In this and several other respects, this set is a step BACKWARD form my 12 year old Pioneer, which had an odd ball aspect ratio halfway between 16X9 and 4X3, but turned out to be a pleasing compromise for viewing 4X3 material, and had a "stretch" feature to make the black bars smaller on widescreen movies, but with no discernable distortion of the picture elements. For $1600, do we get to be picky about this? I think so.
What are you watching? TV (standard def or high def) Movies (same)? There should be an option called Dot-by-Dot that will line up (or scale) the image to fit each image. There are rare times when pixel-to-pixel processing doesn't work, it depends on the source material. Ced
I think you got the only three real choices. some tvs have more than 1 zoom mode, but always lose at least some of the picture. Just display its native aspect for now(live with the pillarbox). Soon, everything will be widescreen, and you will only get small bars with anamorphic material.
Someone (Sharp or a hacker) needs to hack the firmware and provide another option--or variable aspect ratio adjustment. There will always be old movies, etc., in 4X3, so the problem doesn't go away with the change to HD. Maddening...
Very true. tis the nature of change. If there is something to be pissed about, its why did we have 4x3 in the first place? I'm pretty sure film has always been widescreen... Oh well, i just watch everything in its native resolution, deal with bars.
No so. Most old movies are in 4:3 (sometimes 3:2) and that's one of the reasons televisions were originally created with that size screen. For me, the only way to watch 4:3 content on a widescreen television is pllar-boxed (black bars on the side). Any other adjustment loses some of the image at the top or bottom or distorts the picture. Why would anybody want to do that just to fill up the screen?
Because... For some unknown (to me) psychological reason, the side bars are MUCH MUCH more objectionable than top and bottom bars ala letterboxed movies. I, too have been a purist for years, since letterboxed movies became available on Laserdiscs (I still own 3 players and hundreds of Laserdiscs). I never minded the black bars, nor did my wife. I assumed the side bars would not bother me, either. I was wrong. I don't know why. They just really bother me. We've been getting used to a VERY broadshouldered Brian Williams on NBC nightly news, and a really fat Oprah. But there must be a better way. Besides, I'm a control freak. Just give ME the power... How hard can it be???
Well at least they are black bars. You should try dealing with grey bars on the side, man talk about distracting. I had a RP Toshiba that for some reason, they decided to use grey instead of black. I didn't notice it until I got home, needless to say, I took it back.
