Can someone help me understand widescreen TV's?

[66217]

I bought a new HDTV today, a Philips 47". And the guy at the store kept mentioning a feature the TV has to auto-resize the image to fill the screen.

So I asked him how this was done, because I was under the idea that doing this would cut off parts of the movie (from left and right). But he told me that nothing is cropped.

How is this possible? It doesn't makes sense.

 

[yg17]

If you're watching a 4:3 (regular, standard def) show on a 16:9 widescreen, it will stretch it horizontally to fill it. It looks like complete crap because it's not proportional at all, so I recommend watching standard def stuff with the black bars on the sides. You don't use the entire screen, but at least it looks normal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stretch-o-Vision has some good info on it.

 

[mkrishnan]

I think he just meant that images that are not 16:9 would be automatically stretched (from 4:3) to fit your television, etc. That is, nothing would be cropped, but any content not in 16:9 would be distorted / stretched to fit.

 

[4God]

I was going to answer but seeing as two of you are already on the same page (at the same time) I guess I'll just have to agree with ya.
I watch SD with the black bars on the sides on my Samsung 40" and it looks waaaaay better than stretched, IMHO.

 

[66217]

Of 4:3 video in a widescreen TV I knew it could be stretched, and I agree, it looks quite horrible =). But this guy meant HD movies. In the store the HD movie was playing full screen (without the back bars at the top and bottom).

 

[mkrishnan]

Of 4:3 video in a widescreen TV I knew it could be stretched. But this guy meant HD movies. In the store the HD movie was playing full screen (without the back bars at the top and bottom).

Right, so movies are not usually shot in 16:9... they're usually shot in an even wider ratio like 2.35:1 or something like that. So those movies show top and bottom letterboxing, if shown at the correct aspect ratio (that is, unstretched), on a widescreen HDTV. Those movies then get stretched in the opposite direction -- your 4:3 TV gets stretched horizontally to fit (so the people look wider than they should). Your 2.35:1 or 2.39:1 movie gets stretched vertically, so that things show up taller and narrower than they should be.

I think you'll have to play with it and decide if you like it. I got used to 4:3 stretching (my HDTV doesn't stretch the other way also, like you're describing). You'll have to watch and choose for yourself. I'd be shocked if you cannot turn it off.

The other vague possibility is that, if the image isn't being stretched vertically, it's panning and scanning, but I can't imagine they'd do that.