Thread: ...I watch TV in SD.

Seriously, Comedy Central, MTV, VH1(But they don't play videos anyways), E!, The Weather Channel, TVLand and who ever else is stuck in the stone age.

Could they look any shittier on my LCD?

BL

Comedy Centeral has an HD brodcast...as well as the weather channel and Tv land...It depends on who ur provider is.

I hate the fact that they want an existing customer to pay $250 to upgrade but if I was a new customer I could get half off service for a year and a free hd receiver. I think I am just going to change companies and get their new customer offer.

yup. Or have your wife/roomate sign up for it instead. switch back and forth.

comcast finally, in the last year, added a lot more HD channels. Most of the cable networks, more of science/history ones, FNC HD, CNN HD, etc.

can't stand watching crap not in HD. And, the black borders on the edges make the center content burn my plasma.

It depends what TV you have, since that TV is gong to upconvert the signal from 480 to 720/1080. A good quality upconverter will have the final image looking decent... but TV's with good upconverters aren't always the cheapest one.

Hopefully in a few more years it won't matter anymore. I haven't watched an SD show in a long time, though I still watch 480p DVD's sometimes and they upconvert fine in either my Sony DVD player or my PS3.

EDIT: Your STB might also be doing an upconversion, which you could disable in favor of letting your TV do it (maybe)... there's a lot of things that could be happening here.

you can upconvert all you want. If it's a 4:3 image, it's not going to occupy a 16:9 space. It's not wide enough, unless you stretch it (and I don't, since it looks dumb).

Even your 480p DVD's are in 16:9 format, so they can occupy the space. Black borders has nothing to do with resolution density, but rather the aspect ratio, and what you're going to do with it.

FOR EXAMPLE....south park is in 4:3. You can get whatever "HD feed" of it you want....but it's 4:3. And unless you stretch it to fit the wide screen....which looks dumb......you get borders. Grey. white. black. whatever.

Originally Posted by Veovis

EDIT: Your STB might also be doing an upconversion, which you could disable in favor of letting your TV do it (maybe)... there's a lot of things that could be happening here.

I think you misunderstand what upconversion is?

"upconversion" is about converting a 480 into 720p into a 1080p, etc. Adding/removing pixels to match the resolution of the screen. Not the aspect ratio. If you upconvert a 4:3 image....it's still going to be 4:3, regardless of the resolution. to fit it on a 16:9 screen, you'd have to "stretch" it, which of course my TV does, as do all wide screen TV's.....but it's dumb looking. Hate it.

Some TV's detect this 4:3 signal, and automatically stretch a 4:3 image to fit a 16:9. My TV is supposed to do this, but not only have I disabled it, but I never saw it really detect and get it right to stretch a 4:3 signal more than once or twice. I hate skinny heads and broad shoulders.

Of course a square peg won't ever fit a round hole.

I was assuming that his generic "looks shitty on my LCD" complaint might be in some part dependent on whatever upconversion he was unknowingly submitting his signal to. It is possible to make these things look "less shitty" (which is still, shitty).

But yeh, 4:3 is really hard to watch these days. I was happy when the Simpsons finally went 16:9. I don't think there's anything 4:3 I've watched in years, except for The Wire which I still don't understand their rationale for the 4:3 decision there.

Originally Posted by Veovis

But yeh, 4:3 is really hard to watch these days. I was happy when the Simpsons finally went 16:9. I don't think there's anything 4:3 I've watched in years, except for The Wire which I still don't understand their rationale for the 4:3 decision there.

you don't watch south park?

A lot of times, feed for sports will be in 4:3, but when they show them on ESPNHD or whatever, they add those HD bars on the sides to fill in the gaps.

Nope, no south park or sports for me. :P