I can't stand to watch content that has been manipulated to fit my screen, whether that means stretching, slicing, pan and scanning, or anything else. Give me OAR or nothing.

I didn't set my DVD player to output 16:9 when it was connected to a 4:3 TV to vertically stretch the picture to get rid of the black bars at the top and bottom. Now that I have an HDTV, I'm not about to start distorting or zooming the picture to get rid of the black bars on the sides.

No I don't zoom 2:35 movies, just non hd channels.

I watch HD programming almost exclusively, so most everything fits my set save for episode fo The Simpsons or other full frame programs. Non-anamorphic DVDs are, naturally, zoomed to fit my screen. Streched images are for JSP who bought his HDTV because it's the hot thing to have and doesn't give (or have) shit #1 about how his TV should properly look.

Stretched. It's already shitty cable TV so who cares if it's stretched. Yeah I give a fuck about OAR on a grainy shitty signal. Also if you have a quality TV stretch mode doesn't look bad at all.

Yep, if you'll suffer burn-in, avoid the side bars, but that's the only reason I could see to ever stretch an image, otherwise OAR ALL THE WAY BABY!

(aside from the burn in problem) it's kind of like listening to a 45 rpm record at 33 1/3 because you don't like all that silence at the end of the song ... or am I dating myself a bit?

In my case, I don't give a damn what a non-HD cable image looks like, because it typically looks horrible anyway. Only non-HD shows I watch are news programs. Therefore I stretch it so when watching an HD 16:9 show or movie, those ghosting images aren't there.

I never stretch a 2.35:1 film, and I only watch 1.33:1 DVDs (TV shows are the only DVDs I have in that ratio) on a standard TV set.

I also use my image retention removal features to remove the ghosting caused by those 2.35:1 bars after viewing, such as white wash and orbiter...come to think of it, I have a lot more movies in that ratio than I thought.

I'm not worried about "burn in", which is damn near impossible now as it is (without doing things intentionally to cause it obviously), just the ghosting of black bars and bright text gets a little annoying from time to time, but it's never permanent.

If you hate your crappy cable pic, change it. Is this rocket science?

Also, what kind of TVs do you all have? Almost no TVs currently being sold suffer from burn-in. At all. You are talking about a problem from the 1980s, when people finally started having a little money to get big screens, yet knew nothing about them.

Although almost impossible to find in a search, I did a poll on this same subject some months ago (and included the "Zoomed" options missing from this poll):

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/showthread.php?t=498147

OAR but I did not think of burn it and I am brand new to this. I watched widescreen half of the time on my old tube and never got burn in but it died on me. So I have to worry about burn in on my LCD? I never noticed anything of that nature on my LCD computer monitor and when going to modes that would take off those things that are almost always on. How long until burn in set in? For some reason I thought the new televisions were more protected against such things. Now I am afraid but I will not watch a distorted stretched or cropped image and do have plenty of OAR fullscreen.

It won't happen on an LCD.

One of my HDTVs is 7 years old and has no burn-in. And zoom modes never look "natural" ... They look halfway OK unless what you need to see is on the edge of the screen, then it looks like crap.

So, OAR.

Well I agree with you that LCD does not "burn in" I found this interesting over at the Samsung site....

Are LCD TVs Subject To Screen Burn In?


Although much less susceptible than Plasma TVs, LCD TVs are still subject to screen burn in (image retention). In general, you should avoid keeping a static picture (that is, a picture that contains no or few moving elements) or a picture with static elements (black bars, black borders, logos, etc.) on your LCD TV for more than two hours at a time. If, for example, you have your TV set to 4x3, and have black borders on the top and bottom, or on the sides, changing the picture size for a minute or two every couple of hours, say during commercials or in between shows, would decrease the chance of screen burn in. Reducing the brightness and contrast of the screen when it is displaying static elements will also decrease the chance of burn in.


http://ars.samsung.com/customer/usa/...=0&PROD_ID=154

Side bars definitely. 99% of LCD TV's won't burn your TV, and there's certainly no point in watching 4:3 content in a stretched mode. It looks terrible.

I got burn-in on my old CRT HDTV, so nowadays I just alternate between the different modes of zoom/stretch/just/pillars depending on my mood at the time. For films, I watch those strictly in OAR. Most of the TV shows I watch are in HD anyway, but for other SD cable channels not in HD, I don't care either way these days. More about preserving my 16x9 HDTV set's longevity (quality-wise) over letting crappy quality SD cable channels leave their mark on my TV set. Just being pragmatic, not dogmatic.

I can't stand stretch-o-vision of any sort. OAR only. And stretching SD just makes it look even worse. Ugh.

BTW: LCDs can indeed burn in, but it takes tons more abuse than a phosphor based (CRT/plasma) set. I'd bet any kind of display can burn in if abused badly enough. Although I've never heard of a DLP burning in.