I got an HDTV! Now what...

[hungrych]

My family finally decided to get a new tv, and we got an awesome looking Sharp Aquos 37 incher.

Unfortunately we don't have hd cable or even digital cable yet so everything looks like crap, but watching dvds and playing games via my Xbox 360 at 480p looks really nice. Maybe I should get an outboard upscaler for dvds and channels that aren't availble in HD? I have no problem with the bars on the side, but the rest of my family seems to hate them...

[ojnihs]

i hate you...

[Yikes]

An upscaler will not get rid of the bars. The bars are the result of the differing aspect ratios.

I strongly suggest splurging on digital cable. It?s the best source for HD content.

[hungrych]

An upscaler will not get rid of the bars. The bars are the result of the differing aspect ratios.

I strongly suggest splurging on digital cable. It?s the best source for HD content.

I thought upscaling also stretched it. Oh well... having it stretched by the tv looks ok I guess, but what's so damn bad about bars.

[Yikes]

There?s no way to get around it, if you want a 4/3 (Standard TV signal) to fill a 16/9 HDTV screen there are two things that can be done.

1st the picture can be stretched. Stretching results in a geometric distortion (Makes everything and everybody short and fat). Personally I find stretching totally unacceptable.

2nd most 16/9 TV?s allow you to zoom. Zooming is a crude (i.e. non-intelligent) version of what is done to Letterboxed movies. When a movie is letterboxed (converted to a 4/3 aspect ratio) the viewable 4/3 box follows the action, so crucial moments that happen at the side of the original widescreen film are seldom missed (except when such items happen simultaneously on both sides of the film). When a TV zooms it just zooms in the middle. This chops off the top and bottom of the picture. This is annoying; the screen chops off the top of everyone?s head, also directors use the middle (even the top and bottom) of the screen for critical items fairly often.

The way that I like to describe it is; when zooming you will see more of less, and quite possibly miss critical elements. When you watch with the black bars you will see less of more, and you will not miss anything.

A little about fixed pixel displays. Your new TV is an LCD TV that by it?s nature is a fixed pixel display. Such a display has a native resolution (probably 1,366 x 768 pixels). This means that the TV has a scaler built in, and all inputs except those in its native resolution are scaled to the needed resolution. How well this internal scaling is performed depends on the power (processing power) of the TV. Therefore it is unlikely that buying an inexpensive separate scaler will improve the results. Good scalers have tremendous processing power and utilize proprietary algorithms, they also happen to be very expensive.

Scaling a regular TV signal (even with the very best scalers) will never result in a picture like that of most true HD signals. The theoretical ?Best? resolution of standard TV is 330 lines interlaced. In reality this 330 lines is seldom achieved. Digital TV (Non-HD) runs the gambit from being as crappy as bad standard TV up to 480 lines interlaced. Then there is HDTV that runs from 480P (Progressive) up to 720P and 1080i.

So when viewing a standard TV signal you are attempting to turn a sow?s ear into a silk purse. So imho getting digital cable is the only way to go.

Sorry if this post has been redundant, I?m bored.

[grawk]

On my toshiba, there's a "theater wide" setting that will stretch the screen to fit. It also can zoom in a little to fill in the grey areas. I just got used to seeing fatter people on tv

[Yikes]

There are some TV?s where the ?Stretch? mode is graduated, where the middle is not stretched and towards the outside it is stretched even more. This type I find even more obtrusive, the closer something is to the edge the geometric distortion increases dramatically.

[hungrych]

Thanks alot Yikes, that really helps. At least I figured out that you can play 360 games in 720p or 1080i, no idea if it's native or what but it looks great and there's no distortion.

It sort of sucks that most of the channels I watch aren't availible in hd (cartoon network, comedy central, food, that's about it ), but at least I can get them with digital cable.

[Dusty Chalk]

Don't stretch -- that's just wrong. What's the point of watching hi-def if you're going to watch a fucked up picture? Would you want to see a short squat Wonder Woman? Would you want to see a short squat Buffy? Would you want to see short squat Charlie's Angels? I rest my case.

[grawk]

In hd, it's not gonna stretch, it's only SD material that needs stretching. The choice is to get a 16x9 display, and stretch SD, or get a 4x3, and have bars for HD.