Do you stretch 4:3 sources to be 16:9? (redux)

[superklye]

I don’t and I don’t understand how people think that a stretched image that makes everyone on screen look twice as wide and all distorted is better than having black vertical bars.

When watching a widescreen DVD on a 4:3 TV, I don’t see these people zooming their DVD players so that the image gets cropped but fills the entire screen (though at least that isn’t distorting the picture), so why the reverse?

[OWA]

No.

[Monolyth]

That's what Pan & Scan versions are for, and P&S is different then the zoom, P&S is done by the studio to keep the 'important' content on the screen at any given scene, which does not mean that it's a simple process of 'zooming in' on the image as one would be led to believe.

Stretching it is just wrong though, honestly what noobsteak would do this? Can we take them out back and strangle them with my sock? Sheesh...

[superklye]

It's like people think they aren't getting full usage out of their widescreen TV if everything isn't widescreen.

Stretching 4:3 not only DOES NOT make it HD, it makes the SD source look even worse being spread over a larger area of a different ratio.

[Subtestube]

Never - I'd rather have black bars than a stretched image in all cases.

[Tygerwoody]

Hell no. Never fails that 90% of Sports bars you go to do though. Drives me up a freaking wall. There are nice HDTV's all over the place, and its all stretched SD garbage. If they are going to display SD content, at least keep it in scale. I don't know why people think its "more impressive" to have all of the screen filled up when everyone looks like stretched peices of crap.

[evilghost]

I do it and the wife likes it as well. Granted it certainly distorts the perspective but I don't mind it. We've got DirecTv so the picture already looks like butt because of their nice compression.

Sometimes I think I'm a anthropologist with all the artifacts I deal with when watching TV.

It's also a little easier on the eyes from a distance.

[toxikneedle]

I do sometimes, but I don't watch SD content that often

[Marvel_us]

My dad used to want it streched because he kept going on and on about he is wasting screen space but when I showed him the difference he kept it with the bars.

Why is it that most HD local or sports channels like ESPN use the bars? Can't they just use 16:9 for the HD channels and keep 4:3 for the SD ones?

[J-Mag]

No option for zoom?

Stretch sucks but some TVs have decent zoom in modes where you loose a little top and bottom.

[toxikneedle]

No option for zoom?

Stretch sucks but some TVs have decent zoom in modes where you loose a little top and bottom.
Yeah, my TV's zoom is terrible... My parents have the 32'' Bravia LCD and it has awesome zoom features. Kinda sucks, makes me want to steal it from them.

[evilchris]

OAR always.

[crainger]

I let my TV zoom and crop for me. Unless for some reason it can't find a sweet spot and constantly zooms in and out or it just looks like ass, then I'll force it 4:3.

[shabby]

My tv has like 4 different stretching options, full/wide/cinema/zoom. Wide is the best setting, it crops a bit from the top and bottom, stretches the outside a bit but leaves the center of the image intact. It looks pretty good actually, hard to tell that its stretched.

[betterdan]

Hell no.
When we had the 47 inch crt rear projection tv we kept it non stretched for about 4 years then last year I noticed a slight burn in from the bars so I switched it to stretch mode. It looked like Gib's ass during a sweaty wrestling match (in other words HORRIBLE). Shortly after we bought our current DLP set and said goodbye to that crapola stretch mode for good as DLP doesn't suffer from burn in.

[lee63]

I find it hard to watch any SD anymore (lee63)

[-=Gib-McFragger=-]

I find it hard to watch any SD anymore (lee63)Me too, but when I do, I sure as hell don't stretch it. :)

[Arioch]

I always try to maintain the aspect ratio of the source material when possible.

[MustangSVT]

I try as best possible to keep original aspect ratio, so no I don't stretch 4:3 material on my widescreen TV.

The most annoying thing is going to a pub and they have all these widescreen HDTVs and they do stupid things. Instead of watching the HD Sports channel like TSN-HD or SportsNetHD they'll have it on the SD version of stretched. Or worst I've seen, they were on SD TSN on all their HDTVs and somebody working there was using the remote and they had all the HD channels too, but instead they chose the SD one and it was already stretched and they fiddle around with the "zoom/stretch" modes and left it on "zoom 4:3", so that the 4:3 image was zoomed in to fill the screen. It looked worse than VHS. :(

[|MaguS|]

No.

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