(Untitled)

[nephariuz]

We're housesitting for Diana's dad, who has a huge Mitsubishi HDTV... Like so many HDTV owners, they were watching standard-def shows, stretched to widescreen (which I can't stand, but apparently no one else notices). After much poring over the manuals, I figured out how to set it up correctly. (The digital cable box was routed to the TV through

Comments

[yakamoto]

If you don't stretch the standard def shows to widescreen it hurts the TV. You get burn in on either side of the tv. I hate it too, but luckily our tv has 4 or 5 different viewing options to properly stretch the picture so it doesn't look like people are super fat or 10 feet tall. Luckily though we don't watch too much stuff standard def. We actually have our cable box hooked directly up to the tube via HDMI. Those high def channels are amazing. We have been DVR-ing the crap outta the Planet Earth series too and....yeah. Wow. I pray those come out on HD later on.

[nephariuz]

If the sidebars are black they won't burn in, will they? (And if they're grey, they will, but more slowly, right?) Is this a plasma thing, or an LCD thing, or both?

[yakamoto]

Plasma TVs can suffer from burn-in produced by static images. After extended periods, stationary images "burn in" and produce an after-image ghost which remains permanently on the screen. With technologies such as 'pixel orbitor,' new plasma TVs have addressed burn-in and significantly reduced the issues of older models. LCD TVs do not suffer from burn-in, but can have a "retained pixel charge" which may also produce ghosting. Stuck pixels are also possible with an LCD display. So yeah...its more likely to happen with plasma than LCd, but it does happen. That is one of the big reasons I went with LCD. The tv people out there also say that if you are a gamer of sorts, it is better to go with LCD as well because of all the static images that are present.

[nephariuz]

What make/model did you get? Are you seeing any blurring?

Somebody did a Java app that is supposed to fix stuck pixels by displaying what amounts to TV static, but it's not guaranteed to work.