Widescreen HDTV and View Modes

[wolfsrun]

I have a 55 inch Mitsubishi RPTV (Diamond series).

How careful do I have to be about burn-in? We rarely use the TV other than for movies and the X-box. all of our TV is watched in HDTV, which fills the entire screen.

However, often, while watching movies, the film does not fill the screen and I have black bars. Some movies fill the screen, others don't and I am still not quite sure about how to determine which DVD's will work either way.

In order to avoid the bars, we typically watch in expand (which can look pretty strange depending on the film) or zoom, which cuts off some of the film on either side. Is there a better setting? Which is better?

How much do I really have to worry about burn-in. And why does burn-in occur becasue of balck bars on the top and bottom.

Thanks.

 

[BMXTRIX]

If you are watching a movie, then you don't have to worry about it. Burn-In, especially with rear projection CRT is possible if you watch a 20 hour movie with bars on the top and bottom, but a 2 hour flick and then you watch other stuff, is not an issue.

Buy all your movies as widescreen version (not full screen) and check the aspect ratio on the back of the box. Most you will find are 2.35:1 ratio. This is wider than your screen and will handle it by putting black bars on the top and bottom when viewing. If you see 1.85:1 then this will fill your screen completely and accurately, but likely is not the original aspect ratio that the movie was filmed at.

Don't distort the movie just on the worry of burn-in. Just watch a movie, then fill your screen with something like regular TV for a while then watch another movie. I would only worry if all you did was watch movies with black bars top and bottom.

 

[ebough]

Check out this site: http://www.hdtvoice.com/voice/showthread.php?t=1044

All you need to know.

 

[BMXTRIX]

That was a pretty nifty read, I gotta say that the terminology that is being used for the different aspect ratios definitely seems manufacturer supplied and does not conform to what most people will call them.

4:3 is almost always either 4:3, normal, or standard
16:9 is usually 16:9 or WIDE - sometimes 'full'
Zoomed 4:3 I have never heard called 'fill'. Typically it is zoom or letterbox. Letterbox is most common as it is designed to take 16:9 content that is presented in a standard definition format - so you have black bars top and bottom, and gray bars on the side, then ZOOM in to blow the letterboxed image up.
Smoothwide is definitely just a term seen on one specific TV. Since it is a combination of zooming and widening, wide-zoom or zoom-wide is seen a lot. Stadium or 'natural wide' is common as well. Most people that I have met use this to watch TV on their plasmas to help avoid burn-in and not overly distort the image.

Meh - just terminology, but seems to come from RCA who is hardly the front runner on HD technology and verbage.

 

[wolfsrun]

Thanks!

thanks for the advice about burn in. We do try to limit movie watching with bars as much as possible. Usually we will zoom, but my wife is German and we often get older movies with subtitles that dissapear if the movie is zoomed. Since we only watch one or two of these a month, I am assuming that it will be ok.

I feel a lot better about those movies now...I was literally unable to enjoy a movie with bars becasue I have been so worried about burn in.