My first question was about dvd's and widescreen tv. I got my answer and understood it. Thankyou. My second question is if I buy a wide screen tv what does everyday tv look like on it. Not dvd's like the news and just everyday tv programs. Not dvd's. My husband says if its broadcast in widescreen it will fill the screen if its not it won't.

I believe most everyday tv broadcasts will appear to have vertical bars on the left and right sides of the picture unless it is broadcast in HD widescreen. If I remember correctly some widescreen tvs have an option to strech/zoom in on a standard 1.33:1 image but by doing this your still going to lose part of the picture.

That was the question I had thankyou for the answer

Standard tv broadcasts (4 by 3) will have vertical bars on the left and right of the picutre when shown on widescreen tv's(16 by 9) However many of the widescreen tv's on the market have several "enhancement" modes that will allow you to expand the picture to fill the entire screen. This is done by either stretching the picture out, which causes some distortion of the picture, or zooming, which causes less distortion but loss of some the picture.

My Mitsubishi has a "stretched" mode that will leave the center of the picture undistorted, but slowly stretches it out toward the edges. I watch all regular TV this way, and the distortion is so minimal as to be almost unnoticeable. You also have the option of watching it with bars on the sides of the picture if you want to watch in 1.33 mode.

When your husband talks about shows being broadcast in widescreen, these will typically only fill your screen when watching digital TV (ususally HDTV, with the exception of FOX). The HDTV format calls for a 16:9 display. Just because you see a show in widescreen on an analog channel, doesn't necessarily mean that it is broadcast appropriately on the digital channel. (The new Star Trek comes to mind)

I hope this was clear & helpful, though this discussion will probbaly be moved to the Hardware Forum.

It's important to note that even though a surpising number of shows are broadcast in widescreen, it won't be in widescreen for your TV with out a decoder box. Most widescreen TVs are only HD-TV ready and with normal hook-ups you will just get the analog 4:3 verision.

The reason I closed your first thread was because full screen television is displayed in the same dimensions as full screen DVDs, which the thread I linked to covered. That is what you asked in the first thread.

Next time, if someone directs you to an old thread that goes over the same topic of your thread, and closes your thread, please continue discussion in that old thread instead of starting a new one. Thanks.