What's really fun is when the original signal is converted back and forth between 16:9 and 4:3 several times. You can get picture distortion and/or black bars in the horizontal and/or vertical axes. It's like repeatedly translating between English and Chinese.
Yeah, that has bothered me as well. What usually has happened in those cases was that a movie was originally filmed in 16:9, but in order to show it on a 4:3 screen, the network actually broadcasts a 4:3 signal that contains letterboxing as part of the "image" rather than broadcasting the original signal and properly identifying it as 16:9. When the 16:9 set receives this, it treats it like any other 4:3 signal and pillarboxes it.
The set I have (42" LG LCD) actually has a user selectable "zoom" mode which will scale content like that so that it fits properly.
The only gripe I have about the set (which is true of all HD Tvs that I've seen) is that if I try to use it a 1920x1080 computer monitor (using a DVI -> HDMI cable), the TV automatically "overscans" and crops off the edges of the desktop! The TV will only display my desktop without overscan or distortion if I set the computer's resolution to 1370x768.
However, If I use a regular VGA cable instead, the TV simply leaves the incoming signal alone and displays it at the proper resolution, although things like fine text tend to be a bit blurry due to the slight lossyness in the VGA cable.
Example- Hey.... You should come over and check out my new 60" TV.... Yah, cost me a fortune......HD, Flat screen, plasma dah di dah di dah, Yah, spent another small fortune on a audio surround system XXX and than I had to get hundreds of dollars in cables. Had to upgrade my cable service. (I know I'm not the only who has heard this story) Yah, the whole system cost me about 10 grand.
You go over to check it out and ..... The freaking picture is all outta whack! And people are watching it like nothing is wrong!!!!! Most wide screen TV's have the ability to show the proper perspective, but the picture may get a little smaller.
So there have to be millions of (dumb) people out there spending big money to watch big, clear out of perspective television!!!
I have never understood why so many value a slight increase in the size of the image over preserving a show's original content and aspect ratio. Even before the days of wide aspect-ratio TV, I was annoyed that so many chose to watch pan and scan widescreen format as opposed to letterboxing. Now people are stretching 4:3 shows out to 16:9 which is much worse.
