An anonymous poll just to see how people prefer watching 4:3 non-letterboxed material on their 16:9 HDTVs.

OAR all the way: 4:3 pillarboxed. I hate watching a stretched/zoomed picture.



EDIT: Ooops, I didn't know this was supposed to be an anonymous poll. You didn't see me here.

On my projector I am OAR. On my plasma at work, I stretch.

Even though I have a LCD, I'm paranoid about burn in so I usually like to have the screen filled at all times despite my support for strict OAR. But Lately I've been leaving it alone.

If it's native 4x3, I stretch it on my color tube to avoid burn-in, and on my LCD I windowbox it. For non-anamorphic material (i.e. the unaltered Star Wars trilogy on DVD), I stretch it.

4x3 windowboxed. I couldn't do it any other way. Of course, non-anamorphic letterbox can be zoomed since no picture is lost or distorted that way.

Windowboxed. No matter how the picture is presented, I won't alter it/stretch it.

I don't understand how people can watch squished heads all day. My uncle has his TV set for squish mode and it drives me batty every time I'm over there.

I know they say you get used to it... but you can get used to watching TV with static and rabbit ears too.

Some people just like to get every inch out of their screen, I guess. Get your money's worth.

OAR. If I ever get burn in that is just a sign that I need a new TV.

There isn't an option for this in the poll, but I watch 4:3 content properly pillarboxed in its OAR on my 2.35:1 screen.

My Sony KDF-46E2000 has an excellent stretch mode. You can barely tell it's stretched. Doesn't bother me one bit and no one has ever mentioned it looked bad to me. And if I wanted a 32" 4x3 TV I would have bought one

Oar

It's driving me crazy that I can't get it to show up in all caps.

My Sony 46 in. has a "Wide Zoom" mode and it looks fine to me. I'd rather not have bars on the left and right. I watch non HD, non digital broadcasts that way.

Watch in Wide Zoom - Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who - Sci Fi Channel
G4 content
South Park - Comedy Central

Watch in "HD" even though not HD - The Simpsons, Family Guy - Fox

So is it a combo of a zoom and stretch or is it 4:3 stretched to 16:9? I mean, stretched is stretched and it's stretched the same amount as any set if it's 4:3 to 16:9, right? Maybe yours does something besides a simple stretch, otherwise I don't see any way around it being the same aspect ratio as any other set... smoother or not.

Squished heads bother me profusely... maybe it's my years in the video studio and animation fighting aspect ratios and any type of distortion.

I know a lot of people who say they can barely even tell a set is stretched. I do not understand these people. They must have funny looking neighbors.

Honestly though, while it bothers me personally to the level that I would not set my own TV that way, it doesn't bother me that other people do make the most of their screens and go ahead and stretch. It's just a matter of personal preference, and I strongly prefer it one way over the other for my own set.

I simply don't watch all that much 4:3 content to begin with because we have a good selection of HD channels and my television watching is limited mostly to shows that are available in HD. So watching 4:3 content on a "smaller screen" isn't all that bothersome to me. I still watch TV on our 17 inch screen in the bedroom so there's no reason I can't be happy with a 32 inch screen for the lamer shows as long as I get to enjoy the good stuff in the full 46".

My Sony 60A2000 has that mode too (kinda a combo stretch and zoom deal) and while it looks better than just stretched or just zoomed, it still doesn't look quite right to me. I guess I'm a purist.

Non-anamorphic DVDs (or letterboxed LDs) are different. They end up playing windowboxed (bars on all 4 sides) on a 16:9 set, so I assume zooming them doesn't result in any picture loss or distortion?

OAR always. I'm glad that older 4x3 movies like Casablanca and The Adventures of Robin Hood are being released on HD-DVD.

In a 4:3 Windowbox with black bars on the sides.

Not possible.

How many days at a time do you people leave your set running that you are worried about burn in. I mean really, damn. It takes a long time to develop burn in, it don't just happen - I mean days of the same thing.

I always leave mine OAR. Like other I will do a 1:1 zoom on non-anamorphic widescreen releases and LD in order make the picture a little larger since it does not tamper with the image.

OAR for just about everything.

Definately OAR.

Windowboxed (OAR)

Like most everyone here, I'll take the black bars on the sides, unstretched and undistorted.

The funny thing is that a friend of mine, who's a cinematographer, and shoot many things from documentaries to TV show, watches 4:3 shows on his TVm stretched out, all the time. I make fun of him for it, but he just doesn't care. It's amazing to me that the peroson that should care most about proper presentation, is the guy that really doesn't. So I ask him how he'd feel if people watched stuff that he shot all zoomed in and stretched out. And he just says that as longs as he's paid for his work, he doesn't care...

I watch everything window-boxed.

I cannot stand to watch stretched 4:3 material. OAR for 4:3 material, just like OAR for 16:9 material. Shouldn't matter, if you care about OAR, you should be stretching the source.

I watch 4:3 windowboxed just as I'm meant to.