What is zoom for anyway?
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My wife watches tv with the 722 on partial zoom at all times. This enrages me.
Lol
IF you watch tv in partial zoom while in 16 x 9 mode , you never , ever see pillar bars on your picture. I for one really HATE black bars ANYWHERE in my picture. I don't see why I have a 16 x 9 tv if the picture is going to have black bars are letterboxing. I found a way around it for the most part . If you leave the receiver in 4 x 3 #2 mode , you get a clear picture on all sd shows without zooming of any kind. The people all look normal and not fat or squat and you can read all news scrolls just fine. IF you stretch the picture in hd you will get the picture the way it would look in 16 x 9 normal mode. THen if you don't want black bars on hd channels while watching sd shows , you hit partial zoom or zoom and then no black bars.
Just as there are people that are OAR freaks out there who hate seeing partial zoom there are just as many who could care less and do NOT want any black bars on their picture. And as you will see on some hd channels the picture is always stretched or zoomed to prevent black bars. The average customer and I mean female customers in particular, would rather watch shows without blackbars . THis explains the partial zoom mode that your wife is watching in. My parents do the same thing. My dad gets mad when there are black bars also. I will be glad in the future when the transition is over from analog to hdtv and we can watch all shows , commercials in wide screen mode without black bars of any kind.
Just as there are people that are OAR freaks out there who hate seeing partial zoom there are just as many who could care less and do NOT want any black bars on their picture. And as you will see on some hd channels the picture is always stretched or zoomed to prevent black bars. The average customer and I mean female customers in particular, would rather watch shows without blackbars . THis explains the partial zoom mode that your wife is watching in. My parents do the same thing. My dad gets mad when there are black bars also. I will be glad in the future when the transition is over from analog to hdtv and we can watch all shows , commercials in wide screen mode without black bars of any kind.
Unless they the powers that be come out with a different format. Then we do this song and dance once more.
What annoys me is like last night I was watching a 9/11 program on NTGO that I had to stretch but when I switched back to ESPN to check on the Yanks game it was set on stretch and not normal. This is one feature that I wished never exisited. If it's an HD program keep it on normal and SD is for stretch-o-vision.
I think that partial zoom distorts it LESS than Zoom. The zoomed picture never looked natural to me. Having said that i seldom use either one.
On my 622 sd zoom etc is different to HD, i use normal for hd and partial zoom for sd, and it never changes as i swap around.
On bbc america that i watch a lot, pz tends to fill the screen especially when they show shows with the black bars above and below (letterbox on 4x3) i get to see it all.
You're entitled to your opinion...If you like distorted pictures, that's your business. But WOW...there's so many other things wrong with this.
By putting your receiver in 4:3 mode, you are actually distorting both the HD AND the SD pictures. When you "stretch" the HD picture (which shouldn't have been squished to begin with), you're chopping the top and bottom edge. Just a little bit, but you are. There's also the issue of reprocessing the picture TWICE.
Second, you said "the people all look normal, not fat and squat." Putting it in 4x3 mode stretches the picture. I don't even know how to argue with this one. Do you have some kind of vision disorder? Do you live in Houston or Atlanta? Because not everyone in the US is that wide.
And then you say that women "in particular" prefer distorted pictures. Your evidence for this is that you and your dad do? That's a whole big ball of sexism AND illogic all in one place. My wife may not always know how to correct the picture if it's set in the wrong mode, but when I walk in the room, she hands me the remote and says "fix it".
Finally...and there's so many other wrong things here, but I'm on the verge of tears reading this... finally, there's your belief that we are "switching from analog to HDTV" We are switching from analog to digital. And it only affects over-the air broadcasting. And then, only if you live in or near a major city. And it has nothing to do with HDTV OR aspect ratio.
Analog vs digital, SD vs HD and 4:3 vs 16:9 are THREE ENTIRELY DIFFERENT ISSUES! You can have digital TV in 4:3 SD. You can have 4:3 HD. You can even have analog TV in 16:9 HD! (Though not in the US) There are plenty of programs...say everything produced on television up until a few years ago...that are in 4:3. Do you think those programs will all just disappear? TV Land will just go of the air? No more MASH reruns?
For that matter, do you think The Wizard Of Oz will never be shown again? How about Gone With The Wind? How about every movie made before 1940 or so.
If you want to push the stretch or zoom button to screw your picture up, that's your business. But it's people like you that make companies like Turner and Scripps and Discovery think that we ALL want our pictures screwed up. Do it yourself and leave mine alone.
And thank you to ABC and NBC for not assuming we are all idiots.
It does...or at least it does on my 622.
The problem is, you were stretching a 4:3 HD program. The receiver has no way of knowing what the aspect ratio of the program was, just whether it was an HD or SD signal.
If you had switched between an SD channel and an HD channel, it would have stayed stretched on the SD and normal on the HD.
BTW, you didn't "have to" stretch anything.
I use partial zoom on SD channels that are showing letterboxed programming. On HD channels that are showing letterboxed SD, such as Sci-Fi HD, I find that I have to use full zoom because partial zoom makes things look slightly too wide. I don't know why that is, but it's consistent. It's annoying though because Sci-Fi doesn't always keep their logo high enough to stay entirely in the zoomed area. (What? Why do I want to see the logo? Well, really I don't, but it bothers me to see half a logo. It makes it look like the aspect ratio is wrong, when in fact if I go by the width it's right.)
It does...or at least it does on my 622.
The problem is, you were stretching a 4:3 HD program. The receiver has no way of knowing what the aspect ratio of the program was, just whether it was an HD or SD signal.
If you had switched between an SD channel and an HD channel, it would have stayed stretched on the SD and normal on the HD.
BTW, you didn't "have to" stretch anything.
The only reason I had to stretch the 9/11 Zero Hour program was that eventhough it said HD in the info it wasn't full screen HD, you know the black bars on the side. So that's why it screwed up ESPN on my 222. Locked up Abroad's on NTGEO now with full screen HD so obviously no need to stretch it but why that channel is connected with ESPN I'll never know.
What I'd like is a couple of more modes on the receivers: one to squeeze a 16:9 image horizontally back to the original 4:3, and one to stretch a horizontally stretched letterboxed SD 16:9 vertically back to actual 16:9. Then I would actually have a choice instead of being forced to watch the SD version.
Of course, the networks could also stop catering to idiots who think their set is broken, or that they're "not getting their money's worth" by wasting pixels on black bars.
Of course, the networks could also stop catering to idiots who think their set is broken, or that they're "not getting their money's worth" by wasting pixels on black bars.
Luckily my Dish remote doesn't have a "zoom" button that I could accidentally press
FWIW I immediately change the channel if the image appearers distorted in any way. Life is too short to deal with idiots or channels that pander to them
Talon Dancer
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My wife watches tv with the 722 on partial zoom at all times. This enrages me.
The answer to your question is above. As to you being enraged, well, you are welcome to go fight with her over it. However I will tell you right now that you will lose. So grin and bear it.
You are of course entitiled to your opinion as I am to mine. I base my findings on my wife, mother and my friends who have an hd tv all say the same thing. Their wives are almost always technically challenged and just know there were no black bars on their analog tv so why on their hdtv? Their wives all like the picture zoomed. As to distortion I see NO Distortion in my picture using 4 x 3 mode on my receiver. It looks normal to me in sd mode and in hd mode I see no difference at all. I compared it to my DIrectv hd dvr with origional aspect ratio and the sd picture looks identical to me side by side. There is no distortion in the picture and the people look normal when standing & in proportion. News scrolls all fit in the piture and you can read them. IN hd the picture looks identical to me as well. IF any of the top or bottom gets cut off I don't see it. If you like BlAck bars on your picture then good for you. I Find them annoying and it really detracts from my enjoyment of my 57 " hdtv. I am not alone in that opinion and I choose to use 4 x 3 mode , I also use 16 x 9 mode on shows on Sci-Fi like Dr. Who and Sarah Jane adventures because I can zoom the picture and eliminate the black bars entirely and there is no distortion in picture because it is in hd upconverted by the channel itself.
AS to your condecending tone about Houston or ATlanta being short and fat, you sir are sounding like an eltitist snob in your tone and comparison. I find it offensive and it does nothing to further you point in the discussion. ANd since you will most likely continue to use these type of slurs against the people of the southern half of America I will ignore you from this point on.
IF DISH would use the same origional aspect ratio as DIRECTV does , then the picture would look fine on all sd shows and you wouldn't have to zoom or use the 4 x 3 trick to get the sd shows to look good and fill the screen. THis one feature would should be added to the zoom features .
I use partial zoom the same way. Full zoom cuts out too much information for the picture and stretch makes everyone wide and squat. Partial is a good compromise for those of us who can't stand watching 4x3 on a 16x9 screen. I'll watch the 4x3 if artifacts start to appear.
I may try the 4x3 #2 as an experiment. Hey, DISH must have given us all these settings for a reason, right?
My wife still uses our SD set most of the time and has a similar complaint. She can't stand the letterboxing she gets on the SD conversion of the HD channels. So she makes me zoom all of those so they fill her 4x3 screen.
I mainly use the "Format" button to zoom the picture when the black bars are present now. Most of my viewing is in full HD. I never liked using the zoom before because of the distorted picture. I have an RPTV that is starting to show some minor burn in where the black bars are. Those bars cause uneven aging of the CRTs. Where the bars used to display, that area is slightly lighter than the center image. I didn't think having the black bars displayed would do that, but now I know better. When my kids watch, I always have them zoom the picture to eliminate those black bars.
Keohi HDTV - Learn About - Definitions - Burn in, Screen Burn, or Phosphor Burn
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=406182
Keohi HDTV - Learn About - Definitions - Burn in, Screen Burn, or Phosphor Burn
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=406182
