I'm purchasing the Pioneer 60" for my parents who watch 85% in SD. My questions are:

1) When you guys are watching SD do you watch it with the black bars on the side or does Pioneer have good stretch modes for SD without making people look fat?

2) Also is there a grey bar option. My concern is that if they watch too much SD with the bars they will end up ruining a great TV.

wow..you are spending 5 grand or so on your parents...you are one damn nice son...pioneer has modes thatll keep the middle the same, slightly zoom the picture, and stretch the edges. its called the "wide" mode. works pretty well if you care about that stuff. i usually just keep my 5070 on "full" and let the cable box do the stretching and zooming.

Maybe he has failure to launch. :p

Thanks for the info Dtrell,

It's for the both of them but the occasion is my Mom's 60th birthday so I thought a 60" Plasma would work out great because they are watching a 24" Sony right now.

Can you elaborate on getting the cable box to do the stretching. Does it do it automatically or can you also select different modes like with the tv.

depends on the box dude. if you get an sa8300hd it will stretch the picture. the new pios really dont have a problem with image retention though.

I'm purchasing the Pioneer 60" for my parents who watch 85% in SD. My questions are:

1) When you guys are watching SD do you watch it with the black bars on the side or does Pioneer have good stretch modes for SD without making people look fat?

2) Also is there a grey bar option. My concern is that if they watch too much SD with the bars they will end up ruining a great TV.As long as they don't mind stretching the image a little, SD won't be a problem with that TV. Pioneer has a few good stretch modes for SD. If i had a Pioneer, i'd watch all my SD in the CINEMA stretch mode (middle left pic). The WIDE stretch mode (upper right) isn't as good, but it's still better than Panasonic's JUST mode. The CINEMA mode should be easy for them to get used to after a few weeks, and if they need to see tickers or banners at the very top or bottom then they can just select the WIDE mode. They will have to learn to use the TV's stretch modes although they will probably try to resist. Old people don't want to bother with all the fancy buttons - they just want to watch TV like they have for the past 50 years.

On my Panny, i watch about half my 4:3 SD programs in 4:3 mode with black pillar box bars and after 15 months i have no burn-in.

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/4497/stretchmodessd7ly.jpg

And for completeness, here are the stretch modes available for upconverted 4:3 programming on the "HD" channels (Cinema is not available with an HD signal):

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/8254/stretchmodeshd5rf.jpg

There must be Pioneer applied limits to Cinema mode. Is it possible it isn't available on SD programming when hooked up with HDMI?

I have tried all the modes, like WIDE the best for SD, but it seems that usually, CINEMA isn't a choice when I cycle through the sizes, but I think on SD DVD it IS an option.

Maybe I need to re-read my manual, thought you might know off the top of your head.

Thanks

Doug

Doug,
You have to send a 480i or 480p signal to make CINEMA available for use.

Doug,
You have to send a 480i signal to make CINEMA available for use.

That would explain it. Now I do have my Motorola Cable box set to 4:3 override I think for SD, and 1080I for HD. maybe it cant do that over HDMI on the SD Cable channels.

I do know when outputting 480i from My Toshiba HD DVD player, Cinema Mode is a choice, so what you say makes sense. Might just be with how I am doing my STB.

Thanks

Doug

Doug, You have to send a 480i signal to make CINEMA available for use.So CINEMA mode is not even available when you send the TV a 480p signal?? That would be another problem for me since both my SA8300HD and Tivo Series 3 are connected via HDMI and i cannot pass a 480i signal through HDMI - i have to use 480p for my non-HD channels.

That would explain why DReilly1 can't use CINEMA with his HDMI connection as it won't pass a 480i signal through HDMI. WIDE mode is still a good stretch mode though, but i like the way CINEMA stretches 4:3 better and would be more tolerable when i'm watching racing on SpeedChannel.

Ah! Sorry guys.

CINEMA will work for 480i and 480p.

I just went and tested with my Xbox 360 since it will output 480p - and Cinema works. It is connected via component and I can't check 480p HDMI. I guess I usually deal with 480i via HDMI from my DTV box...

OK, I had to change the settings on my DTV HR10-250 via HDMI to output 480p also (I leave it unchecked for use since I'd rather 480i).

CINEMA is only available for 480i/p signals and can be sent via component or HDMI (possibly other connection types too, but I don't have any others to test).