Concerns about buying a Widescreen TV?
 

My local furniture store had a fantastic deal this past weekend on widescreen projection tv's. - 3 years no interest. I had my eye on the Panasonic PT47WX53 and the Hitachi 51F500, but I passed the deal up because of a few concerns I have with purchasing a projection TV.

I'm hoping some on here can help me with these concerns, in case they have this deal again. For some background info, I probably watch 60% DVD; 30% Regular TV; and 10% PS2 depending on whether I'm really into a game or not that can get much higher.

My 3 biggest concerns are with

1. Burn in: I've read some concerns about video games burning in, and also burn in of the black bars on DVD movies along with burn in of 4:3 aspect ratio on regular TV. While video games are probably only 10% of my overall TV time, when I do have a good game like right now I'm playing Splinter Cell, I may play for 4 or 5 hours straight.

As for 4:3 aspect television, I know you can zoom it to fill the full screen, but have not played around with it enough to determine if I would like watching TV that way. This also would pertain to widescreen movies that don't fill the whole screen.

2. Distance from TV: Obviously tube tv usually has a better overall picture quality, but I am a little worried about the distance I would sit from the television. Approximately seven to eight feet while watching movies, and I usually sit on the floor for gaming, which makes it about six feet.

3. Missing part of the picture: For the widescreen movies, the demo Hitachi was playing Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. I noticed it still had the bars at the top and bottom of the screen. I hit the Widescreen zoom button which filled the whole screen and eliminated the bars, but I noticed that with the zoom function that some of the picture was missing also. I don't know if this just pertained to this particular DVD or would be the same in all DVD's. Thus if I owned that tv then I would not use the zoom function, and would risk the burn in.

These are some of the concerns I have regarding widescreen projection TV's. Part of the problem is I don't have enough time to examine a TV in the store, and I don't know anyone else with one. I would enjoy any comments that people have regarding their experience or to alleviate my concerns. Thanks in advance.

Don't worry about burn in. Calibrate your television correctly with a calibration disc, and you'll be fine.

The bad demo unit is due to calibration issues as well, I'm guessing.

GET ONE!

That's correct. When you see demo units in the store that have burn in it's because the store never adjusted the contrast and brightness down to normal viewing levels. When the tv is delivered the contrast is set to 100% and this causes the bright white, high contrast against dark background image to wear out that part of the CRTs quicker causing the "burn in". If you have your tv professionally calibrated this won't be an issue but you can get by without the pro cal by buying a calibration DVD disc like Avia and following the on screen guides to set the contrast, brightness, color and tint correctly. As lond as this is done your chances of getting burn in is greatly reduced.

Now if you were to watch a DVD that still had black bars because the aspect ratio was wider than your tv or play your PS2 for a few hours there's no reason to zoom in to avoid burn in either. As long as you vary your viewing so that the CRTs wear evenly you'll be fine. Now if all you did was play the same DVD with the black bars showing all of the time or the same PS2 game with the same life bars on screen constantly then you will get burn in. But at the same time if that all you did you'd never notice it either.

As for your seating distance if you go with the 47" set you should be good. I sit about 8 feet from my 55" and games and DVDs look great. Cable tv on the other hand can look awful depending on you cable signal.

Your other concern was the stretch modes. The quality of these differ from each make and model but if you are concerned about burn in I would use it for all but the most important 4:3 viewing. Most makes now show grey side bars for 4:3 material to reduce the burn in effect also. I mean who realy cares if Friends is slightly distorted. If you have too much overscan on the tv bringing down to normal levels like 4.5% on all four sides will also help lessen the amount of distortion. You can either do this by hiring a pro calibrator or finding out how to tweak it yourself by entering the service menu.

Hope that helps you some now go out and buy one.

i would buy the largest set that you can fit in your budget. the general rule for viewing distance these days is about 1.5 times the screen width. for a 65 inch screen (running in native 16x9 mode) that comes to 85 inches which would be right at your 7 foot viewing distance.

but as chipmac says if you watch a lot of crappy analog cable you might not like the results. dvds however will look excellent and HDTV (if you have access to it) will look phenomenal. personally i would go bigger than 47". i don't know what the HDTV situation is in WV but it's going to start popping up everywhere in the next year or so.

just go and see some sets for yourself...bring a tape measure and sit 7 feet away and watch cable, dvd, etc. and make your own decision.

Re: Concerns about buying a Widescreen TV?
 

Where do I begin?

It isn't about filling your screen, it's about watching the movie the way it was made. If a little bit of your screen isn't used, so be it.

Different movies and TV shows have different aspect ratios --- which means that they are different shapes. Whether you have a widescreen TV or a standard TV, you're always going to have some movies and TV shows that don't "fill the screen."

And every time you use your DVD player's or TV's zoom function to fill your screen, you are in fact randomly cutting off a chunk of the picture, all just because you don't like the black bars.

A widescreen TV has an aspect ratio of 16:9. Expressed another way, it's 1.78:1, or 1.78 times as wide as it is tall. "Attack of the Clones" was filmed at 2.35:1, or 2.35 times as wide as it is tall. This obviously is wider than a widescreen TV, therefore there will be small black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.

This will be the case with every movie made wider than 1.78:1, which is an awful lot of movies. Movies and TV shows that are narrower than 1.78:1, such as standard 4:3 TV shows (1.33:1), will have bars on the sides of the picture.

Is there anything we can do to get you to quit zooming the picture and get used to the bars?

isn't it true that if a dvd is anamorphic, that the whole screen would be filled and there'd be no black bars even if the OAR was cinemascope? and there'd be no loss or cropping of the picture?

Mr. Salty's answer sums it up pretty well.

No, you have completely misunderstood the process of anamorphic enhancement, which is about increasing resolution for widescreen displays and does not in any way alter a movie's aspect ratio.

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articl...c/welcome.html

I've had a widescreen set for a couple of years, and because I set the contrast and brightness levels correctly, there isn't any burn in. I watch stuff in the 4X3 often, too.

Thanks for your comments.

And Mr. Salty, I don't really mind the black bars, I've been watching widescreen movies since way back in the VHS days. :lol:

I guess I just assumed that with widescreen TV that the intention was that you wouldn't see the bars. My main concern about the bars would be the burn in. I don't want to hit the zoom button if part of the picture would be cropped because to me the whole intention of widescreen movies is to see the whole picture.

Nice reply ...

And Mr. Salty thanks for clearing that up for me as well... I hang around here (mostly the other forums), but your response was educational...

Thanks, I'm glad I could help!

i thought it was 2.5?

is it 1.5 for a widescreen tv?

and 2.5 for a standard tv?

I bought a 57 inch widescreen for the family this past Christmas. I had many of the same worries you do. Here is a great place to go for any info you might need on big screen TV's. You will find the people very helpfull there, just give them time to reply, because it is a slow moving forum.

http://www.********.com/voice/index.php


Also do not rush yourself into a purchase. I spent several months looking at big screens to make sure I got a good deal, and used a lot of info from the above link to my advantage. You will find some sales people don't know didly about big TV's, and all they will be conserned with is selling you a warrenty. Mind you, that the $$ you will spending on a bigscreen does warrent considering an extended warrenty. I found buying a big screen to be like buying a car, and with persistance, as well as patience, you could end up getting a great deal if you stick to your guns.

(Edit) For some reason my link is not being allowed here or not working. I find that to be bullocks!!

Look for ********.com since the link will not work. A great forum for this subject.

(once again edit) O.K. It is censoring that also. This baffles me why is the word H - D - T - V - o - i - c - e - .com is not allowed in this forum. I guess I'll go see if any sticky's are at the top. WTF

I'm very happy I don't suffer the things that most HT viewers have. I am like Cypher in The Matrix I bought the w/s to see the whole piture not to do a autopsy on each movie. "Ignorance is bliss" was his saying.



I watch a movie I don't look for all the artifacts, dot crawl, red push and a ***** load of others that make them mad, istead of enjoyng the beautiful OAR of the movie.


Black Bars are not seen for I do what a pay for a ticket movie theater does, I turn off the lights and keep them off for the duration of the movie.