Actually, I’m a neanderthal who still has a 32″ 4:3 CRT TV in his living room. Why? Because the issues of formats / HD etc. are not settled yet.

I remember watching people with early widescreens and wildly distorted 4:3 TV shows. Of course, these early adopters refused to admit that the image was naff.

And then you have high street stores such as Comet or Dixons who have giant show-stopping HD TVs in the entrance running standard fare DVDs - and all I can think is “nice TV size - pitty the image is “.

Oh, and by the time I get around to buying a HD TV - I’d expect a ‘proper’ anomorpic widescreen - not the psuedo 16:9 widescreen. I mean, come on - what were they thinking when they came up with that?

Maybe it went like this:

Interior: Dull grey office full of management types…

GUY 1: “Hey guys, we should really try making widescreen TVs.”
GUY 2: “Yeah, but then the videos and DVDs we look right.”
GUY 3: “That’s OK - we’ll just sell two formats on this new DVD thingy coming out.”
GUY 1: “Cool, but the ‘box’ shows will only take up half the screen…”

Guy at the end of the table swivels his chair around from staring out of the window with a big smirk on his face:

Guy 4: “I’ve got it. We’ll make a NEW widescreen format. Once we’ve sold all the ‘fullscreen’ rubbish off and everyone’s get used to it - we can then bring out the proper format. We’ll call it a transition format.”
Guy 2: “Yeah!”

Scene fades with guys using their tablet PCs to browse richbugger.com…

(Personally, I’m staying as far away from HD-DVD and BluRay as I can for as long as possible, but that’s just because I don’t like all the DRM and encryption crap. That’s also one of the reasons I’ll never willingly use Vista.)

Even worse when big-box retailers are running stretched SD content through their new HD sets (which of course is split sixteen ways until it looks even worse than it already did). Practically impossible to tell how a monitor is really going to perform unless you pipe some real content through it. It’s like taking a new Porsche out for a test run, and then just driving 20 MPH in a straight line.

BTW, longtime reader from Jammer’s Reviews here. I consult your reviews not only for assistance when I’m looking for a good, nostalgic episode of DS9 to watch, but as episode guides too. Nothing finer out there.

My TV’s manual warns against using the 4:3 ratio in unstretched mode for extended periods. It bugs me, but I’d rather deal with a squashed picture than a TV with a burned-in picture.

I think that certainly explains why bars and restaurants tend to use their TVs that way.

Of course, ultimately it would be nice if everyone with 16:9 TVs would just go get 16:9 content. The problem we’re going to see for a number of years, is that there’s too much 4:3 content still out there forcing this to be an issue.

Then they see a 4:3 image squashed (Stretched? Squeezed?) into a 16:9 TV and they get on their high horse (of cliched stupidity):

“Oh, if this is ‘Wide screen’ then I’ll stick with my regular TV!!!!!”

Bah. I’m amazed these people aren’t still using a Bakelite radio.

Actually I’m amazed some of these people have the mental capacity to breathe.

There was the comment above about the 4:3 image being burnt into the screen. This has happened with my plasma, because when I first bought it (3 years old this week) there were still quite a few shows in 4:3 here in the UK (And there still are if you watch the channels showing old repeats). And as for episodes of Trek, X-files, Moonlighting etc (in fact any of my old DVDs/VHS) then it is 4:3.

If I am watching a 16:9 show and the screen is quite light, then you can see the burnt edges of the 4:3 image. Annoying but true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lcos

LCD and, I believe, LCOS can exhibit a form of temporary image retention, but it heals itself in a matter of minutes.

My new DLP RP set has a “zoom” mode that takes 16:9 letterboxed content from 4:3 signals (as when watching, say, Stargate on SciFi channel) and stretches it to fill the screen. Result: No black bars, and no distortion. I just wish the amount of zoom was adjustable, because it zooms just a little bit too much, and hence cuts off a bit at the top and bottom. The position is adjustable (so I can adjust it to cut off at the bottom only, which is generally better) but the amount of zoom isn’t. Still it’s much better than either letterboxing or a distorted image.

Actually, what I REALLY wish is that scifi channel came in HD, but oh well….

I suppose one solution would be to just buy a bigger tv. Uh-huh.

Aside from that though, it seems i’ll have much the same issue with the 4:3 in the 16:9 era…or maybe not with what later comments suggest.

Eventually we’ll just have content piped into our brain and do away with this whole aspect thing altogether…