[lasthash]


Im considering buying my first widescreen hd tv but I really don't like the black bars that play in movies on them. A large amount of what I want to watch however is television shows by streaming. If I get a widescreen hd tv will it have black bars on the screen like it does for movies?

 

Is this mainly a movie/film problem or will television shows be ok? Are they shot differently?

 

If so, roughly what amount of tv shows will have black bars on them and will ALL movies have black bars to?

 

What about regular cable tv and dvds?

 

I know a lot of people ask questions about black bars and your probably tired of it by now but I couldn't find much information for this specific question to give me a clear answer.

 

[lovinthehd]

Try searching for aspect ratio. Not everything is shot with the same aspect ratio so if you have your tv set correctly some content will have black bars. On a widescreen tv with a 16:9 screen size you'll fill the screen with around 1.78:1 aspect ratio; you'll get black bars on the sides with standard tv shot in 1.33:1, many movies are 2.35:1 which will give you black bars top and bottom. In short, you can usually "zoom" the picture to fill the screen but you will lose picture quality and part of the picture. Its really best to watch the show as it was made rather than worry about the black bars too much. One concern with a plasma and a lot of content with black bars could be uneven pixel aging but it hasn't been a problem with mine (Samsung PN59D8000).

 

[wtfer]

If a movie says aspect ratio: 1.78:1. then it is full widescreen.


If a movie says aspect ratio: 2.40:1, then it will have black bars.



Most blu-rays & DVDs are 2:40:1 aspect ratio. (black bars on the top & bottom)

99% of everything shown on broadcast & cable TV is 1:78:1.


Movies that were originally 2:40:1 that are shown on TV are usually cropped/zoomed in to remove the black bars.


for that matter, every HDTV has some sort of zoom feature, that lets zoom in on the picture to remove the black bars if they annoy that much.

 

[tubetwister]

Thing is when you zoom or stretch you loose 1/2 of your resolution so your nice new 1080p set is suddenly a 720p set . You also want to have your TV screen fit or screen size settings (not zoom adjusts ) set at full pixel,1:1 pixel mapping (preferred ), screen fit or similar not necessarily 16:9 which can result in an over scan and again reduce your resolution .Options vary by set model but most have some sort of 1:1 pixel or screen fit adj. OTOH at some viewing distances Zoom /Wide adjusts not be a concern for some folks YMMV.