Plasma as second display

It's a good choice. It does about as good a job as any plasma with plain ol' TV and looks terrific with OTA HD.


Mark

I'm doing the same thing. I use my 17SF for DVD and HDTV movies. I bought a 42" Panny for normal tv viewing. Works out great for me.

But what about the 4x3. Are you guys stretching everything to 16x9. I presume if you watch everything in 4x3, it will cause burn-in, right?


John

I am considering the same question John. I also have a 9000 for movies and "serious" HD. I want a plasma for casual TV and am worried about SDTV on it. Should I be? From what I've seen in the stores SD, even cable digital looks just mediocre, some of it is unwatchable but I'm seduced by the way the plasma will look in the room (High WAF).


Are you concerned about non HD, non DVD, source material?


Richard

Quote:
Yes, but not as badly if you can use gray rather than black side bars. Even better, my display has a stretch mode where it doesn't loose as much off the top and bottom and distorts the edges more than the center. I'm pretty certain the Panasonics have an aspect mode called "JUST" which does this too.


From the description it sounds like it would make you sea sick watching it, but I've found it to look very natural and difficult to tell most of the time that it isn't actually 16:9 source material. At least for me, 4:3 done this way looks natural enough where it just isn't an issue.

I watch everything in stretch mode. It is rarely troublesome.


Mark

Yes John it does, Paul was correct. It is called "Just" mode.


I hope people don't get sick of hearing about this (sorry to all who have read it 30 times already) but I eliminate about 2" of horizontal overscan, and then expand the picture by a few inches vertically. It leaves about 1.5 inches of picture off the top and bottom, and is 8% too wide of an aspect. But it looks completely natural and then I don't have to worry about the non-linear distortion caused by the "Just" mode which is ok for sitcoms, but not good for sports.