Went back to my unplayed Playstation 2 backlog and discovered a somewhat unpleasant issue.

There is no way I can make PS2 display proper 4:3 image on any HDTV.

If I try to run the games the way they are supposed to be, meaning 4:3 with black bars on the sides, the image is slightly squished horizontally - very noticeable if you look at objects that are supposed to be circles, they turn into 0's. If I use the TV's zoom/fill/stretch modes, then I invariably end up with short and fat characters.

The same thing happens on 3 different HDTVs.

The only games that do not exhibit this behavior is a handful of PS2 games that support widescreen, in which case you get proper aspect ratio.

Interestingly enough, the same thing happens if I try to play Xbox Guilty Gear XX on my Xbox 360. Or if I play Guilty Gear Accent Core on the Wii.

Didn't PS2 have a secret-code input, kind of like Gamecube, for progressive scan? Maybe that triggered a full-time widescreen output.

No, there is no progressive scan. In fact doesn't matter - I tested with a game that has progressive scan option - still looks the same, squished horizontally with every character suddenly becoming anorexic :)

This is the same on
-42 1080p plasma
-37 1080p LCD
-60 720p LCD projection TV
- 720p projector

OK, I decided to do a side by side comparison of PS2 and other 480i sources.

Side black bars that you get with PS2 are noticeably wider than the black bars you get with any other 480i source.