I just got a Digital TV, but it is not HD. It picks up analog and Digital channels of the air with the aid of a $16 rabbit ears antenna. The digital channels have amazing pictures on channels that have muddy/ghosty reception in analog mode.
My question, though is this. I have the choice of aspect ratio for watching the digital channels. I can get widescreen letterbox or full screen (no distortion with either). This is even on old Seinfeld epsiodes. So are they chopping off the top and bottom of the full screen picture in order to do wide screen?
Digital TV question
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ichabod
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Re: Digital TV question
Yes.bmadigan wrote:So are they chopping off the top and bottom of the full screen picture in order to do wide screen?
Either that or it could be stretching the picture out. Either way both are undesireable.
Re: Digital TV question
No, they are not stretching the picture. I'd have noticed that immediately.ichabod wrote:Yes.bmadigan wrote:So are they chopping off the top and bottom of the full screen picture in order to do wide screen?
Either that or it could be stretching the picture out. Either way both are undesireable.
Just to add to that - digital broadcasts are always in 16:9 (widescreen). If a station is broadcasting a 4:3 ("fullscreen" as Americans call it) program, they will have added vertical black bars to either side of the signal.
When you say "I have the choice of aspect ratio for watching the digital channels.", it's actually your receiver that is doing the changing of aspect ratios. Most digital receivers can zoom in on the picture to make a 4:3 image fill the 16:9 screen. This crops off both the black side bars and the top and bottom of the actual picture. You can also stretch the picture to fill a 16:9 screen, which means it's distorted out of shape.
There's often also a mode that relies on the fact that most of the time you're focussing on the centre of the screen, so it stretches the edges of the picture out to fill the 16:9 screen while keeping the centre unstretched. As you can imagine, any time the camera pans across the scene, you tend to feel slightly seasick as objects stretch and unstretch as they cross the screen.
When you say "I have the choice of aspect ratio for watching the digital channels.", it's actually your receiver that is doing the changing of aspect ratios. Most digital receivers can zoom in on the picture to make a 4:3 image fill the 16:9 screen. This crops off both the black side bars and the top and bottom of the actual picture. You can also stretch the picture to fill a 16:9 screen, which means it's distorted out of shape.
There's often also a mode that relies on the fact that most of the time you're focussing on the centre of the screen, so it stretches the edges of the picture out to fill the 16:9 screen while keeping the centre unstretched. As you can imagine, any time the camera pans across the scene, you tend to feel slightly seasick as objects stretch and unstretch as they cross the screen.
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