Tim_p wrote:
Oh yes, it is even worse when someone has a 16:9 TV receiving a 4:3 signal and their TV is set-up to stretch it out to 16:9.
OHHHH GOD do I ever hate that! And of course when you see a TV set up like that, it's a pretty safe bet that their progressive-scan/component output DVD player is rigged up to go through the VCR, which connects to the TV via a coax cable.
I fixed a friend's 16:9 TV so it wouldn't stretch 4:3 programming. I thought he'd be appreciative of the fact that it no longer turned everything into a distorted mess. Instead he made me switch it back because he wanted to see the whole 52" screen filled out, regardless of how bad it looks.
He also once asked me to set up his 5.1 surround sound system, which I gladly did because I enjoy that kind of stuff. I got the speakers positioned and aimed PERFECTLY-- precisely the same distance between the left & right fronts / left & right rears when sitting in the center of the couch, every parameter on the receiver was tweaked, I adjusted the speaker output levels to make it reproduce surround sound as faithfully as possible, etc. It sounded SO nice.
He walked in, and immediately hated it because you could
see the speakers. Then he complained that he couldn't hear anything out of the surround speakers. I tried to explain that they're for ambience and you're not really supposed to notice them in most cases, but he insisted on cranking them up and enabling one of those stupid "concert hall" DSP modes so they're always blaring. He ended up moving the speakers so they're more hidden, even though that means the left rear speaker is about 2 feet behind the front, whereas the right rear is about 15 feet away. Needless to say, it sounds like crap now.
LOL We think alike.
One of my(few) friends has a 46"? projection HDTV and he still has basic cable running to it...He thinks because he has an HDTV that he automatically gets High-Def. I think all most people care about is if the picture is bigger or not. A couple mothes ago, I was over at my now ex-girlfriends house, and "just had to" adjust the color and black levels on her computer monitor. I asked her if it looked better, and she said she didn't notice much of a difference.