Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Wide Screen TV Rant

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Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 05-17-2010, 09:25 PM:

I had to spend the weekend at a meeting in Atlanta. We stayed at a Regency Hotel, but I've a feeling this irritation is everywhere. Maybe those of you who spend more time in hotels can tell me.

They had Wide Screen TV's in the rooms. They were all set permanently to Wide Screen, so everything was squashed. There was no way to change it to the correct ratio since they had proprietary remotes that would not let you make any changes. I even tried using the buttons on the TV to reset, but you needed a remote to do the detail work.

I asked at the front desk if this could be fixed and they were totally confused.

On top of everything, it was not a digital signal, so most of the channels looked like stretched out YouTube videos.

Do the manufacturers of these TV's think that people are going to see these in a hotel and say "I must have one?" Or are they just thrilled to sell so many to hotels it doesn't matter (maybe they even have TV versions).

Worse yet, have people been so trained to see crappy pictures they think that just because it fills the screen that's the way it is supposed to be?

I didn't, and usually don't spend much time watching TV when I'm out of town, but still it is annoying. Do I need to carry a universal remote when I travel?

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-17-2010, 09:48 PM:

We stayed in Disney World last year at Animal Kingdom Lodge, one of their newest hotels and the TVs in the rooms were the same. Very aggravating, but at least at Disney World you don't have much time to watch TV anyway.

The bar next door to our theatre has several large TVs, all of which have beautiful pictures that are stretched out of shape. Another bar down the street has even bigger TVs that are also fouled up. My best friend's 40" TV is stretched, too. It's no use trying to talk somebody into fixing the picture....they are convinced that they paid for that screen real estate, dammit, and it WILL be filled.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-17-2010, 11:00 PM:

If it wasn't like that, people would overrun the lobby saying "Over HALF of my TV screen is black!!" People are stupid, they really are. They won't accept a little bit of black, but they don't care if the moon looks like an oval.

What's weird is that I tuned in to a PBS HD station last night and they had a 480i signal running, stretched to fit a 16:9 area. WTF? This is why I do not donate to PBS. The mind boggles.

Posted by Michael Voiland (Member # 5386) on 05-18-2010, 01:28 AM:

I was staying in a hotel once and went up to find the hallway lined with new flat panel tvs. We just so happened to get the tv switched out and when they were changing them out i watched them take the tuner out of the back of the flat panel and insert a new on command one. Interesting process to watch. Just a little slide out card. A lot of tv manufactures work together to make hotel television sets which are locked down displays. I wonder if you ran into a lack of hd programing available on these new sets.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 05-18-2010, 09:27 AM:

Why would the hotel install HDTVs and then not deliver any HD content? Because they're being cheap.

Posted by Richard P. May (Member # 3598) on 05-18-2010, 09:52 AM:

Joe's statement above just about sums it up. Last fall we stayed at the London Hotel, NYC, very first class and pricey.
The TV in the room was the same as described, full screen and stretched, and unable to adjust from the remote. When I spoke to the hotel staff, they seemed to know what I was talking about, but said the TVs were set from a common source, and couldn't be changed. Besides, the technician said that's the was his is at home.
The same thing at my dentist's office. They run "I Love Lucy" reruns with closed captions to entertain those in the waiting room. Everybody is double sized. The office staff thinks that's the way it should be, since it fills the screen.
I can go on with other examples, but same answers. We're getting to the LAWRENCE OF ARABIA on the hand-held device generation, and no use getting frustrated, I guess.

DM

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-18-2010, 10:13 AM:

I, too, am really annoyed by the extremely common problem of HDTV misuse; although I have not encountered the locked down permanent stretch-o-vision phenomenon at a hotel yet.

If I was subjected to such idiocy in a hotel room I would just turn off the TV set, leave it that way and be in the room as little as possible. I might tell one of the managers at the front desk they could count on me NOT buying any pay per view movies, etc. during my stay thanks to the hideously stupid way the HDTV monitors were set. I absolutely will not watch stretch-o-vision programming on my own TV set at home. So I certainly do not feel like watching that crap anywhere else.

Some cable networks (TBS, TNT, History Channel, etc.) will stretch 4:3 ratio SD quality programming to fill the 16:9 screen on their HD channels. Again, I absolutely refuse to watch anything broadcast that way. When I see it I instantly click past it to another channel.

I wonder if the widespread use of stretch-o-vision on widescreen TV sets, whether it is set by the user or the programming is stretched by the network, is contributing to eating disorders in young women. When the TV set is showing human figures stretched horizontally 133% of normal proportions, and so many viewers accepting this stupidity as a normal TV setting, certain self conscious women might feel the need to shed even more pounds! Obviously, I'm kind of joking when I say this, but at least some segments of the general public always seem to impress me in new ways with their depths of stupidity.

Here in Lawton nearly every restaurant and sports bar has at least a few widescreen HD-capable TV sets. I'm pretty sure Buffalo Wild Wings is the only restaurant showing any native HD programming on those monitors. Just about everyone else merely stretches SD programming. Garbage. And even Buffalo Wild Wings shows stretch-o-vision crap from time to time since they aren't set up to show HD programming from the local TV stations in our viewing market.

Most of the restaurants and sports bars in Lawton subscribe to DirecTV despite it being a bad choice for this specific viewing market. DirecTV has never carried local TV stations in the Lawton-Wichita Falls viewing market, not any of them in SD much less HD. In order to pick up those local channels just about all waste even more money subscribing to the local cable outfit (Fidelity Communications). BUT! The idiots don't follow through and get the HD package. Oh that'll cost too much money. They just get the basic service, the locals in SD and stretch the shit out of them. It never occurred to any of these jackasses they could put up a good outdoor antenna and pick up those local HD channels for free. Dish Network has carried our local network channels for roughly a decade and has both SD and HD versions of those channels beaming down from two different satellites.

Electronics companies have been trying to make stretch-o-vision nonsense look better with other kinds of modes. Some have the object proportions closer to normal in the center of the screen while really stretching the edges. Seems like a decent approach (if you can get past the fun house mirror look), but it doesn't factor in how so many camera shots are composed. You don't line up objects in the very center of the frame unless there is a dramatic reason for it. It's mostly rule of thirds, look-space and other conventions that shift objects of interest off center into that really stretchy zone.

Another thing that drives me up the wall is that "motion enhancement" or "motion flow" stuff so many new 120Hz and 240Hz HDTV sets have. I really cannot stand looking at that stuff on any movies. It looks horrible, blurs out a lot of image detail and just gives the movie the look of a videotape being stuck on fast-forward. I can tolerate it at minor settings on live video sports programming. But not at all on movies or any TV show shot on film or trying to look like it was shot on film.

Motion flow and stretch-o-vision at the same time? If I see that I might feel like burning down the building containing that TV set.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 05-18-2010, 10:26 AM:

quote: David Stambaugh
Why would the hotel install HDTVs and then not deliver any HD content? Because they're being cheap.

And they know they can get away with it, just like movie theatres know they can get away with crappy showings.

Wonder if there is a discussion group for Hotels Done Right [evil]

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-18-2010, 10:32 AM:

Unless you buy digital satellite or digital cable, there is practically no such thing as Hi-Def TV in Erie, PA.

NONE of the 5 stations in town originate in Hi-Def. Even when they receive network feeds in Hi-Def, they downconvert to analog so that the program can go through their analog equipment. Then it is upconverted back to digital to be broadcast through their new digital transmitters.

What's even more interesting is that three of them are owned by the same broadcasting company. (WICU-NBC, WSEE-CBS & WFXT-FOX) All three of these stations are linked together with one piece of fiber. I know a guy who used to work master control for this company who told me so.

Now that we get digital TV over the air, we can also receive the CW network as a subchannel from WSEE. We also get one station with three subchannels of religious programming. All of these are analog signals upconverted to digital.

The only station in town that has any semblance of Hi-Def television is the PBS network. They broadcast three subchannels. One is the regular PBS feed. The second is the PBS #2 feed which usually broadcasts news. Third is the "Create" network. I know these are in digital sort-of-Hi-Def. Just about a year ago the stations tower was struck by lighting which put them off the air for a couple of weeks. They had to replace a lot of their equipment so, when they did, it was all new stuff. But, still they do not originate any programming in digital. PBS only broadcasts Hi-Def if the network feed is Hi-Def. What's more, they broadcast at a pretty low bitrate. Whenever there is a transition between scenes or programs the picture macroblocks quite noticeably. The story I heard is that the chief tech tries to use the lowest bitrate he can possibly get away with.

Even if you buy cable TV or satellite TV, you are not getting Hi-Def unless you pay extra for digital cable or digital satellite. So, basically the companies nail you buy only giving you low quality picture unless you pay extra.

So, there you have it. Even if they say it's Hi-Def, it's not really Hi-Def!

This is why I am not buying cable TV or satellite TV. This is why I am not buying a new television, either. I am still using the same JVC 25 inch television I bought in 2001. I have a "DigitalStream" converter box and an antenna on the roof. I get "perfect" reception insofar as the signal strength is concerned.

If, for some reason, the signal comes through in widescreen mode, all I do is set the converter box into "zoom" mode so that the picture is sized to the common height of the TV screen and lets the edges get cropped off.

I once sat in a sports bar which had soccer on one television, a billiards match on the second and bowling on a third. There were other sports programs on other channels but these three were right next to each other. All three screens were in "stretch mode." Me and my friend were drinking beer and laughing our asses off at the sight when the bartender asked us what we were looking at. We told him that it looked like they were batting Easter eggs around the pool table, the bowling alley and the soccer field but they guy could NOT tell the difference.

It was late in the evening so we convinced the guy to give us the remote to the TVs and we switched them into "zoom" mode but the guy STILL could not tell the difference. Those TVs stayed like that for several months until they got switched back. In all that time, not a single person noticed the difference.

It is my firm belief that people are THAT STUPID!

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-18-2010, 11:03 AM:

It's pretty damned bad if they can't tell the difference between a circle and an oval. They probably can't tell the difference between a square and a rectangle either.
[Roll Eyes]

I wonder if this problem should be classified as a form of mental illness or a learning disability. The problem is maybe 75% or more of the United States' population would then be classified as geometrically challenged. All the more reason to keep sending as many manufacturing, tech and engineering jobs overseas as possible!

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-18-2010, 11:26 AM:

quote: David Stambaugh
Why would the hotel install HDTVs and then not deliver any HD content?

It's not really about the quality of the picture. It's the shape of the TV (flat screen = cool).

At least some TV stations are now broadcasting a picture that is shaped such that it WILL fill the screen and still look normal when the TV is in that "stretch" mode. Fox News and several others are doing this.

When watching CNN I like to enlarge the picture so it's cut off at the top and bottom, but the images look otherwise correct. If I then frame the picture a bit, I can cut off most of the annoying constantly-shifting graphics at the bottom of the screen, making for a much more enjoyable view.

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 05-18-2010, 11:53 AM:

quote:
It is my firm belief that people are THAT STUPID!

Sad but true. I've had many people tell me that they can't tell the difference when the picture is in stretch mode.

Last year I did a setup for my local American Legion post and set all of the HDTVs for normal mode. They have become accustomed to seeing 4X3 as 4X3 and likewise 16X9. No one complains about the unused space when viewing an SD broadcast.

I once wrote a letter to A&E Networks about their incessant desire to stretch SD programming. Of course, I received no reply.

To paraphrase; Its just another example of TV DONE WRONG.

Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 05-18-2010, 12:09 PM:

The Marriott brands are putting LCD's in their rooms now, and the settings have varied from property to property.

The newest (six months or less) that I've stayed at have the local high def channels programmed in and even have some high def cable channels, all identified in their channel guide they put in the hotel guide. The other channels are typically stretched, but the remotes (mostly Phillips and LG 720p LCD's in the 32"-36" range) have aspect ratio buttons on them, so you can easily modify to your preference.

The older properties may or may not have the local HD channels programmed in and typically you have to find them...they're never actually listed in the hotel guide. All but one property I've stayed at locked out the ability to re-scan channels.

Hotel televisions are typically models built specifically for lodging properties. Modern sets have a port on the back where a box can be plugged in and automatically program everything from channel lineups to color settings, not to mention locking down any feature they don't want guests messing around with.

The box itself is programmed by the hotel management using one of the sets and a special remote.

Don't EVEN get me started on the default color settings.

Posted by Matt Kerekes (Member # 2777) on 05-19-2010, 11:17 AM:

At home I don't watch SD channels anymore for the exact reason that if it is stretched it looks ridiculous and it just seems like a waste of the screen if it's in 4:3, however if I do happen to watch SD content I do watch it at 4:3. Something else I wanted to add to this discussion is commercials. What really annoys me is commercials on HD channels that are in 4:3 aspect but have letterboxing because they are meant to be widescreen! So now you have black on the top and bottom and the sides, what the heck is the issue?

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-19-2010, 12:30 PM:

The issue is very little quality control at the broadcast and cable networks.

I have no problem at all with 4:3 ratio video content being pillar-boxed in a 16:9 frame. But I really dislike the frequent window-boxing of many TV commercials and even some TV shows. Window-boxing is where letter-boxed material in a 4:3 SD frame is then pillar-boxed in a 16:9 frame. You get a small or even tiny rectangle in the center of your TV set. Pure shit.

Basically any TV show or commercial letter-boxed in a 1.77:1, 1.85:1 or 2.39:1 ratio really just needs to be shown in HD on any HD channel. 1.77:1 would fill the screen. 1.85:1 letter-boxing is hardly noticeable and 2.39:1 letter-boxing in a 16:9 frame is still pretty mild and the image goes edge to edge on the TV screen.

The one that beats it all is when a network like TBS or The History Channel will show a letter-boxed SD quality TV commercial or show and then apply stretch-o-vision to it. That's the sure sign the decision makers at those networks are totally clueless or blind as bats. I feel like beating on them with a baseball bat. Totally unprofessional.

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 05-29-2010, 07:35 AM:

Im on Dish Network for all things TV. My TV's are all old 4X3 images.

The 2 local PBS stations are running a stretched picture on everything. I feel like I am watching a badly done pan and scan, only the camera never pans, when I'm seeing this.

The local news stations, (10 minutes of news, 50 minutes of repeating) typically shows photos and mug shots all stretched out of shape... Their faces look alot like Stewie on The Family Guy... Dont they have a clue? Well, they are a FOX station...

I set up my friends HDTV when he got it. He didnt like the black bars on either side of the picture, so I reluctantly set it at full screen. I tried to explain the image differences, but since he paid for that giant 37" screen, he wants to see something allover it.

Posted by Josh Jones (Member # 447) on 05-31-2010, 12:11 AM:

At the moment, this hotel has yet to join the age of flat, still watching fishbowls here. The Hyatt I stayed at recently had plasma TV's but I did find a way to set the display to adjust based on mpeg flags. It just forgot every time I shut the set off [Frown]

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 05-31-2010, 02:00 PM:

The La Quinta in Temecula had plasma with locked-wide displays. [thumbsdown]

Not sure who was providing the feed.

The Fairfield Inn Marriott in Santa Clarita had plasma as well, with DirecTV for the feeds, and selectable display modes. [thumbsup]

My brother has a 37" 16:9 flat panel and leaves the cable box set on "stretch". He doesn't see the distortion and gets very angry whenever I point it out. He also cannot see the difference between the SD stuff on the regular channel numbers, and the HD versions on the 700-series channel numbers (Cocks Cable here in LAS). I've learned to just not say anything about it anymore.

Next week, the Hampton Inn in Arcadia (or is it in Pasadena?). We'll see how HD enlighted they are... [Smile]

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-31-2010, 09:35 PM:

I suppose the hotels are just avoiding complaints. If they let people adjust the width, then every time some projectionist stayed in the room, the next person coming in would complain about the picture (and be too dumb to know how to "fix" it) so the hotel would have to dispatch somebody to "fix" the set. The way it is now, the random projectionist is upset but still stays in the room; and the 99% of the public that doesn't know scope from flat is happy with their distorted images.

Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 05-31-2010, 11:04 PM:

Actually, Marriott has it down...The TV DEFAULTS to widescreen every time you turn it on...but you can adjust it to native.

So you have to do it every time, but it's easy enough, and the dummies are happy from the get-go.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 06-01-2010, 06:10 PM:

Meanwhile, in the people who should know better file - TV news. I don't know how many times, local and national news, I have seen the in studio monitor set to wide, with everything stretched and squashed, but cut to the direct feed and it is the proper ratio. It's like they have to prove they are up to date by having wide screen monitors, but have nothing to show on them.

Well, they are just props anyway.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 06-01-2010, 06:36 PM:

People who work at the local stations are idiots. I have probably told this story here before, but one channel in particular kept stretching 4:3 images to 16:9 during their newcasts. Of course, this messed up the image on EVERYONE'S TV no matter if they had a 16:9 or not. I wrote them an e-mail and told them to please stop it and that it is unprofessional. They wrote back the next day saying that they would never do such a thing, have a policy against it and that they know better. So I recorded the news to my hard drive that night from my antenna feed and sent them full-sized frame grabs of pictures being distorted. Then they backpedaled and said they did it for artistic reasons. Morons.

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 06-01-2010, 09:08 PM:

Joe,

Local TV is not professional anymore. In my area, local news has replaced entertainment. It's so dull.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-01-2010, 10:27 PM:

That TV station might have copied that talking point from various cable channels who do the same stupid shit. Yes, a lot more than just local TV stations with a 16x9 broadcast are airing the horror of stretch-o-vision. I've seen episodes of Seinfeld and other 4:3 SD originated TV series put into stretch-o-vision on TBS-HD, TNT-HD, A&E, The History Channel HD and many others.

Some of the Discovery networks will zoom the shit out of 4:3 SD content to fill the screen. It's not quite as bad as stretch-o-vision but it still looks really bad.

The folks giving the orders to the worker bees at the master control board just need to pillar-box the 4:3 SD content and let certain idiots out there in the viewing market hit the "wide" button on their TV sets.

Sadly, the horror of stretch-o-vision very likely exists because the TV stations and cable networks probably get flooded with angry calls from really stupid TV viewers who can't be bothered with reading anything with the word "user manual" on it or even read the buttons on the TV remote. Some of these assholes might even demand an engineer (if the TV station has one) come out to their house and adjust their TV to fill the screen. "No ma'am, we'll fix that problem here at the station for you and fuck up the picture for the minority of TV viewers who actually have a brain."
[Roll Eyes]

Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 06-02-2010, 06:50 AM:

When I was visiting some relatives a couple of years ago, my aunt complained that, on the HD feeds, everybody "looked skinny".

Posted by Joe Tommassello (Member # 4632) on 06-11-2010, 05:53 PM:

Last week I was in a hotel room and they had a Philips brand widescreen that adjust based on the program you were watching. For example if you were watching a letterboxed movie on TCM (let's say a flat movie) it zoomed in to fill the screen properly...all on it's own. Of course when the TCM logo popped up at the bottom every so often it pushed the bottom up slightly (leaving the top where it was) in order to get all the visual info on the screen.

Fox News Channel now broadcasts exclusively widescreen (who'd have thought a news station would be the innovator?) so it always zoomed up nicely on that and only varied when 4:3 commercials came on. Material in that shape had the weird stretching more as you get further from center issue.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 06-11-2010, 09:21 PM:

quote: Joe Tommassello
For example if you were watching a letterboxed movie on TCM (let's say a flat movie) it zoomed in to fill the screen properly...all on it's own.

Isn't it automatically not done "properly" if the thing zooms in and screws with the aspect ratio? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding you.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 06-11-2010, 11:03 PM:

"Zoom" doesn't mean "stretch" in this instance. Aspect ratio stays the same.

Posted by Joe Tommassello (Member # 4632) on 06-14-2010, 11:28 AM:

It seemed the limit of it's zoom was the equivalent of a flat (1.85:1 or so) picture. 20,000 Leagues... was playing one night and the scope image remained in the middle of the screen with the proper aspect ratio...that is, of course, till the TCM logo came on and it caused a slight vertical squeeze. The 16x9 FNC broadcast retained proper height and width (with no squeezed edges) the entire time the programming was on. While this TV would probably annoy most of us here with it's shifting images it would be great for someone like my mom who wants to see her screen filled all the time but still wants to see choices B. and D. when she watches "Who Wants to be a Millionaire"

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 06-14-2010, 03:30 PM:

I installed a new flat screen HDTV for an elderly neighbor this morning.

I set it up so that when something is broadcast 4x3, you see the black bars.

The owner questioned me on this, and I explained the difference. She is totally satisfied with my explanation, and loves seeing some things on the full screen, too.

I played I Love Lucy, her favorite sitcom, stretched and the regular way. She definitely prefers the regular picture, as she noticed that the Ricardo apartment was all stretched out of shape.

Sharp old soul. She is 95 and getting around pretty good!