Widescreen T.V's

[Rhonda922]

DH and I are looking to purchase a widescreen television. I'm on one of the very well known electronics websites now and I'm trying to look for one. Does anyone know why those t.v's have the black band at the top and bottom of the screen? I find that it takes away from the picture and it makes the screen look so much smaller. Do all of the widescreens have that band at the top and bottom?

 

[Anewman]

DH and I are looking to purchase a widescreen television. I'm on one of the very well known electronics websites now and I'm trying to look for one. Does anyone know why those t.v's have the black band at the top and bottom of the screen? I find that it takes away from the picture and it makes the screen look so much smaller. Do all of the widescreens have that band at the top and bottom?

Black Bars are not determined by the TV, it is determined by the programing/signal. TVs just display the input signal.

 

[Charade]

DH and I are looking to purchase a widescreen television. I'm on one of the very well known electronics websites now and I'm trying to look for one. Does anyone know why those t.v's have the black band at the top and bottom of the screen? I find that it takes away from the picture and it makes the screen look so much smaller. Do all of the widescreens have that band at the top and bottom?

If the programming doesn't fit the fixed dimensions (screen size/ratio) of the TV, there will be black bars either on the top or sides. Most people complain of black bars on the tops on an standard TV when watching a wide screen movie. Some TV shows are slight wide screen now on a standard TV (I think Lost is one). A lot of wide screen TVs have a stretch mode that will stretch the picture to fit the wider screen. That usually only happens on the far left and right sides, not the middle. You can clearly see this while watching a news channel ticker (the news crawler on the bottom of the screen like on CNN or FOX). The lettering will become stretched as it gets closer to the sides. Personally, I don't like it and find it distracting. I would assume that most TVs will allow you to turn it off.


Watching a standard TV program on a wide screen TV is smaller than watching it on the same size standard TV. However, watching a wide screen movie (I don't buy anything (if I can) but widescreen) will be larger on a wide screen that watching it on a standard TV. Eventually, all TV programming will be wide screen. But to confuse things even more, there are a number of different size wide screen movies. All wide screen TVs are 16:9 but not all (most though) are that format. Some are wider (but less tall) than that. Watching these movies on pretty much any TV will show black bars.

I believe you will get used to it.