People who watch 4:3 programs in widescreen

[oraclesmith]

What's widescreen ?

[wendigo100]

I lived in Wales for a while so all the people look normal to me like that.

Who was it on here who wanted some insults for the welsh recently?

[IR35 Avoider]

What really pisses me off is watching material recorded in widescreen being broadcast in 4:3.

The new series of "Grey's Anatomy" on "Living TV" channel has huge grey bars either side, put there by my widescreen TV because it knows it's showing 4:3 material, and within the 4:3 area there are black bars above and below the picture because they decided to shrink it so that they don't have to chop as much off the ends.

[Paddy]

There is something wrong with them. FFS the first clue is in the squat people in every program!

All pubs seem to do it. I put it right in my local, but within two days it was back on widescreen, with a dozen people watching unfeasibly fat footballers running around.

Only the people observing the screen directly ahead will see the distortion. Those people viewing from the side at an angle of less than 45 degrees will see it as normal. A bit like the elongated road marking that appear normal from a distance.

[MarillionFan]

I prefer the cinema. Who doesnt.

[oraclesmith]

We don't have that problem. Our main telly was born in 1982 and apart from a few plastic bits dropped off, it's still going strong.

[Paddy]

British TV

[zathras]

There is something wrong with them. FFS the first clue is in the squat people in every program!

All pubs seem to do it. I put it right in my local, but within two days it was back on widescreen, with a dozen people watching unfeasibly fat footballers running around.

Why worry. Most people don't even have the contrast set correctly so that blacks appear black and whites appear white. Getting the aspect ratio is way beyond a lot of people.

[zathras]

What really pisses me off is watching material recorded in widescreen being broadcast in 4:3.

The new series of "Grey's Anatomy" on "Living TV" channel has huge grey bars either side, put there by my widescreen TV because it knows it's showing 4:3 material, and within the 4:3 area there are black bars above and below the picture because they decided to shrink it so that they don't have to chop as much off the ends.

That's because it is transmitted 14:9 rather than 4:3 of a standard TV. A widescreen picture is 16:9. My Hitachi Widescreen has a 14:9 mode and therefore I can get rid of these annoying bars top and bottom, while having thinner bars left and right.

[IR35 Avoider]

If it was transmitted in true 14:9 there would be no black bars when my TV is in 4:3 mode. The picture would be stretched from top to bottom and people would look thinner, as happens when a true 16:9 picture is displayed in 4:3 mode.

My TV does have a 14:9 mode, and I've noticed that the Freeview box seems able to tell the TV to automatically switch to this, unlike the Sky box which only switches the TV between 4:3 and 16:9. It's all academic as the picture is being transmitted as pseudo-14:9 inside a 4:3 format rather than the real thing.

My TV does have modes designed for stretching pseudo-16:9 and 14:9 pictures which would improve things if I used them. Of course the picture quality will remain degraded because these pseudo modes effectively downgrade the resolution of the picture when they shrink it to fit inside a 4:3 frame.