I have a coworker that might sell me his sony hdtv and I saw it last night and looks good. Now i wrote down part of the model which is KV-??HS420 so i think the 2 numbers i forgot is the size of the tv, so its a 30, 34, or 36 incher and it has a hdmi port not the dvi port.

Now I notice in the wiki list that one or 2 of those sizes says 16:9=auto, what is the auto feuture for and if its not the auto model is it a good buy still?
Ohh forgot to mention is 350.00 a good price for the sony tv? I'll be using my ps3 with it.

Thanks..

Well, it could be a 30, or 34 if it's widescreen.

Or it could be a 32, or 36 if it's 4:3
4:3 TV's auto detect widescreen material, and automatically switch to 16:9 mode.

$350 sounds good, just so long as the TV works and is to your liking.

Test your PS3 with it.

I have a coworker that might sell me his sony hdtv and I saw it last night and looks good. Now i wrote down part of the model which is KV-??HS420 so i think the 2 numbers i forgot is the size of the tv, so its a 30, 34, or 36 incher and it has a hdmi port not the dvi port.

Now I notice in the wiki list that one or 2 of those sizes says 16:9=auto, what is the auto feuture for and if its not the auto model is it a good buy still?
Ohh forgot to mention is 350.00 a good price for the sony tv? I'll be using my ps3 with it.

Thanks..

I recently sold my KV-34HS420 to make room for a KDS-55A3000 (bigger house). Bought 3 years ago and loved it...would have kept it if I had a place to put it. Took a long time to sell, though, ultimately dropped it to $300.

Mine was widescreen version and it displayed widescreen content in that format by default, so that may be what the 16:9 auto thing is referring to. 4:3 SD pictures would be displayed in the format you selected manually...either normal (4:3), full (stretched), zoom or wide zoom but HD content would fill the screen and not look distorted.

..

Or it could be a 32, or 36 if it's 4:3
4:3 TV's auto detect widescreen material, and automatically switch to 16:9 mode..

I have two different 4:3 crts - one detects HD and switches automatically, the other does not.

Not a very important feature in my mind. In the case of the later model SONY's the letter box is implemented via a vertical squeeze that retains scan lines so vertical resolution is theoretically maintained. Earlier sets such as my RCA and others just use the letter box window portion of the scan lines vertically for display and scan black for outside the letter box.

If it wasn't automatic you would be left with watching HD zoomed until you hit an aspect ratio button if your set was not in the letterbox mode already(which is something I do frequently on the auto squeeze anyway).