much more kindly than I would describe someone who can’t fathom that perhaps, just perhaps, most of what the new technology owner is watching is in no way distorted and looks much much better than his old SD picture, therefore he is willing, be it out of laziness or a desire not to ruin his new set, to put up with a mildly distorted image on the occassion he does encounter a 4:3 picture. I would describe that person as a dipshit, so pick a name well north of that and you’ll have your answer.
I get it now, you’re under the impression that the only content anyone watches is 4:3 standard definition shows.
I’m going to have to clear this up for you. People actually watch 16:9 HD shows and DVDs on their televisions as well. Turns out, it’s impossible to watch that content at full resolution without an HDTV. People will, on occasion, buy an HDTV specifically to get that content, and won’t really give a shit if the crappy SD shows don’t look the best they possibly can.
I would call him a consumer making a choice, and you a semi-literate pain in the ass.
Uh, I can fathom that easily. But knowing that most TV content is still 4:3, the overwhelming majority, actually, I know that your scenario isn’t common. Sure, there could be such a creature who likes TV enough to invest in an HDTV set but coincidentally has tastes that perfectly coincide with the relatively minuscule HD offerings, but I wouldn’t imagine them to be the norm. Added to that is the fact that I have seen widescreen HDTVs everywhere, in both public venues and homes, displaying distorted fullscreen content - “fathom”'s the key word, considering your scenario’s pretty much imaginary while mine is based on observed fact.
Stupidity probably can’t be fixed, but maybe with some effort one aspect of your ignorance can be. There are as many ways to use a piece of technology like a TV as there are people who have TVs. I don’t know how many people who have HDTVs watch only DVD and HDTV content on them, but I can tell you that I am one of them. For the first few days that I had my TV, I did not have the HDTV cable box yet, so I watched normal content on it a little bit. It looked OK to me in full screen, full zoom mode. Since I got the box, the only time I have tuned that TV to a non-HD channel was last night as a result of this thread. I get enough HD channels to satisfy my TV-watching needs.
Watching TV in a few bars does not give you any insight into what the rest of the world is watching on their TVs. Cheesesteak’s scenario is not imaginary. Your knowledge of what other people do and see is.
Me too. 
Widescreen DVDs and the TNT-HD channel probably amount to 95% of what I watch.
So then what the hell are you taking personally about my rant about people who watch distorted 4:3 content?
Here are seven reasons for buying a quality HDTV.
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Renting/buying and viewing movies in widescreen on a widescreen is awesome.
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LCD 1080p panels make great jumbo monitors for occasional use. Like last week when I had friends over and we fired up You Don’t Know Jack. Tubes fail to reproduce text in any decent form.
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HDTV rocks, it is crystal clear and we get all of our networks, Yankee Baseball games and some discovery channels and others in HD with Comcast HD Digital.
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On-Demand has more and more HD offerings and widescreen offerings.
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My SD viewing takes 1-2 clicks to set to optimal viewing.
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TCM shows mostly widescreen movies. This works great on Widescreen HD TV, much better than the extreme letterbox of the old standard Tube TV. This said TCM is a great channel. Worth have cable for almost by itself.
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The new Dr Who should be viewed on a widescreen set.
Jim
And what in my OP makes you think that I can’t fathom that anyway? What does it have to do with anything? You think I just sat here and imagined that somebody somewhere must be watching 4:3 content, just to make myself mad? No, I’m talking about the multiple times that I’ve seen people set up their TVs to stretch out a fullscreen picture. These weren’t plasma TVs, and laziness isn’t a factor since just about any HDTV compatible receiver will automatically output the correct aspect ratio if you want it to. Quit putting words in my mouth, you nutcase.
I’m not taking any of it personally. I have enjoyed your repeated assumptions and lack of understanding of the variety of choices people make, and your apparent total ignorance of how a normal TV show looks in full screen mode on a good wide screen TV. The thread recently about bars using HDTVs which were set up improperly, providing a shitty (according to the OP in that thread) picture to the patrons, that one made sense to me. The OP in this thread, on the other hand, is rife with ignorance, stupidity, and nearly baseless broad generalizations.
Jim - The first thing that I watched on my new TV was my deluxe edition of Lord of the Rings. It was worth buying just for that. My wife and I are enjoying watching DVDs a lot more than we did.
I laughed when I saw that the Food Channel was included in my HD offerings, but I’m not laughing anymore. The food looks awesome. Now I’m eating too much.
And you’re sounding like a lunatic acting like we’re talking about religious traditions rather than standardized technology. There really isn’t much individual variance possible regarding this topic as you seem to think there is. There are TWO televison aspect ratios available on the market - 4:3 and 16:9. If a 4:3 image fills a 16:9 screen, the image HAS to be either eclipsed or distorted. That’s just plain math. I know that it’s possible to distort the image in a non-uniform way that may seem more acceptable the the simple stretch mode - I mentioned it before anyone else in the thread did:
There’s nothing I can broadly generalize about here, nor have I yet shown any relevant ignorance about HDTV technology.
Which made it all the more impressive that some of you were still willing to try and resurrect it with thoughtful opinions and clarifications. It’s like you were willing to play out a found golf ball that was behind a tree, smeared with poop and partially submurged in the residue of amphibian fornication. My hat’s off to your resolve.
You realize you responded to the same post twice with equal if not increasing vitriol? and, I’m the nutcase? :dubious:
You’re just plain wrong. HD offerings are not “relatively minuscule.” Your assertion that they are is not at harmony with reality. Listen, I work. I am down from the 16 hours a day of TV I watched in college and law school to about two maybe three a night during the week and maybe (if football or golf is on) four hours on Saturday and Sunday. My viewing hits in the so-called “prime time” where damn near everything is broadcast in HDTV. The sports I watch (college football and professional golf) are almost exclusively broadcast in HDTV (there is nothing cooler than watching a night game or better still the Masters in HDTV – I swear I could see the aeration holes in the greens). The trade off here is that in the event that I stumble on a 4:3 show, I watch it stretched (this really only applies to the Sunday morning politics shows). Why? Because I would rather see everything (so I don’t want to zoom and crop) and the gray bars on the side annoy me more than the distortion (so I don’t want to watch in 4:3). I don’t watch Face-the-Nation for the picture quality, but I bought an HDTV for the picture quality offered by other programming – namely the wealth of HD programming – and by DVD.
You started a Pit thread about how other people use an appliance in their own homes, and I sound like a lunatic? Okey dokey.
And lieu, some of us like frog jizz.
Oh…kay you guys are nuts. Seriously. I don’t know what you’re reading but they aren’t not my posts.
That’s the second accusation of mental instability levelled by pizzabrat in this thread. I’m a nutcase, you’re a lunatic . . .
dammit, make that three
and I love the “aren’t not” that’s downright Clintonian
And that’s what doesn’t make sense. If you can appreciate the upgrade in image quality that HD offers over SD, why would a distorted image throughout an entire program be acceptable at all, regardless of how often it comes up? You’ve finally acknowledged that it has nothing to do with any extra effort, so…that’s stupid.
Do think that everything you don’t understand is stupid or the result of lunacy? Given the things about people that you clearly don’t understand, you must feel like you inhabit an asylum.