# A new way to display HD



## ruralruss (Feb 5, 2010)

I really do despise stretch-o-vision but WGN HD gave me a new one the other night. I was watching a movie about the Beach Boys (don't remember the name but it was pretty interesting) and it was presented in SD format. My initial reaction was that I wished it was in HD but glad they did not give us the fat head rendition. Then I noticed that something just was not right. Oh no, WGN invented shrink-o-vision, the skinny head rendition. When I used the stretch mode on the VIP211K it looked great.

Don't these companies have people to check this stuff before send it out live. It isn't that complicated!


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Unfortunately that is nothing "new" ... I see it all the time on the news (even national channels) where someone has shot video in 16x9 and the channel scrunches it to fit 4x3. (And then put bars on it to fit their HD feed.  )

Sometimes I wish 16:9 had never been adopted the way it is abused daily.


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## Eddie501 (Nov 29, 2007)

The one that drives me crazy is The History Channel. They frequently air programs that were shot 16x9, but they air them 4x3 letterboxed - then stretched out. So you have a stretched image + black bars where neither are necessary. And there's no way for my TV to undo both.

So my only choice is to not watch the program. Nice going!


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## Michael P (Oct 27, 2004)

Some of our "HD" channels contain almost no true HD at all (except for the commercials). The music channels MTV and CMT are the worst offenders. CMT shows feature films in 16X9 fit into 4X3 on their HD channel!


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## ZBoomer (Feb 21, 2008)

Agree, History is bad, but no channels are as bad as the "HD" versions of MTV and CMT. They take 16x9 videos and play them in 4x3 letterbox, SD. WTF? Seriously, WTF. Both those channels are serious wastes of HD bandwidth.

Really the only way to see HD videos is on Palladia after 2am.


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## Guest (Jan 5, 2011)

hi my name is Jason, I'm new to the forum but not new to what you guys are talking about. I work at DISH Network so I see this happen all the time. The providers will send the signal out in so many different ways it can be frustrating trying to figure them out. Like FOX started broadcasting all football is an HD format this year, so if you had an SD screen you couldn't see anything happening in the game, like the score, time left, and the field line would change from white to black. The 4X3 with the side shots is because that video was shot in SD because its cheaper and instead of changing it to HD format MTV and CMT just put the banners on the side. ESPN does the same thing when commercials come on on the HD feed for it so you always see ESPN HD on the sides of the picture during commercials or programming they don't use in HD. This will be changing soon as more providers are going to an HD format only, I would say perhaps another 3 years before you see SD totally disappear from the providers broadcasts, although many have already.


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