16:9 Owners, how do you watch 4:3 programming?

[Filthy]

Title says it all, do you watch in stretched or zoomed mode, or do you watch in native 4:3 format?

[mikealex]

I watch mine in what I guess you are referring to as zoomed mode. Basically, I put my TV in a mode where the picture fills the width of the screen, but crops some off the top and bottom. I scrolled the picture down a little bit, so it crops more off the bottom than the top, which reduces the number of chopped heads that appear. Only problem I ever have with this is that the captions in the X-Files sometimes get cut off, but since the X-Files has been pretty lame for the last few years, I don't care too much.

[wildman]

I use TheatreWide 1 on my Toshiba widescreen TV for native 4 by 3. It stretches out the picture in the last 10 percent of the original image on either side, so it's pretty good. Not perfect, of course, but pretty darn good.

[KCXLT]

I use Smooth Wide on my Hitachi. Same as above, stretches just the edges.

[Lsweers]

On my 47" Panasonic i watch it in "JUST" mode, fills the entire screen

Cheers

Leo

[**DONOTDELETE**]

TheatreWide 1 on my Tosh. It's barely noticable even when you're looking for distortion.

[GOD]

Same here...but it sure is hard on Jennifer Lopez !!!

[Dackman]

I leave my 201 HDD in its stretch mode (used to use Theaterwide 1) on Toshiba 40x81.

Royce

[MrVH]

I watch all 4:3 native programming in "Wide Zoom" on my Sony FPTV which zooms slightly and stretches a bit, similiar to Wildman's explanation.

[Dede]

Ditto to Wildman, TW1 it is when I watch 4:3 stuff. But that is very rare

[rosenqui]

I use the Bev6000 in 1080i mode, so unless I'm watching something off basic cable (rare) I use 4:3 mode with gray bars on the side on the Toshiba TV and 4:3 mode with black sides on the LCD projector.

I find the 6000's "stretch" mode to be a more uniform stretch than the TheatreWide 1 mode on the Toshiba, which means that faces tend to look unnaturally fat.

[MikeSargent]

Eric-

Beware of burn in if you are watching with grey bars. I know a fellow locally who had to replace all three guns on a TW40X81 in less than a year. That's not covered by warrenty.

Mike

[rosenqui]

Hmmm, I'm using grey bars to avoid burn-in, or at least, to get uniform burn-in over the entire tube surface. This is on a 34" Toshiba tube (CW34XC2), not a RPTV in case that matters.

Eric

[MikeSargent]

The problem occurs most often in RPTV's. But you might want to put up an all white screen to see if there are any noticable patterns visible. If so, needless to say, I'd suggest ditching the grey bars and using one of the widescreen modes.

Mike

[mikealex]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr>

Hmmm, I'm using grey bars to avoid burn-in, or at least, to get uniform burn-in over the entire tube surface. This is on a 34" Toshiba tube (CW34XC2), not a RPTV in case that matters.

<hr></blockquote>
If you prefer to watch 4x3 content with bars on the side, than neutral grey is the best colour to choose. But, that doesn't mean that it won't burn in, it will just burn in at a rate somewhat close to the rest of the screen. If you use black, then you will eventually end up with the sides being brighter than the rest of the screen, because they will not have burned in as much. White would be the opposite problem - the sides would burn in faster than the rest of the screen, so you would have dark sides.

Your best bet is to pick one of the widescreen modes that fills the screen, either by stretching the picture, or by cropping the top and bottom, or some combination of those two. This will ensure the most even burn in rate across the entire screen.

Personally, I set mine up to crop the bottom, just because it gets rid of most of the bugs the stations are now putting in the bottom right corner of the screen. The really bright bugs some of the stations are using will also cause uneven screen burn in.