Phat TV

“If you want to look thin, hang out with fat people!” -Rodney Dangerfield from “Back to School”

No! I am not a bigot, prejudiced, closed-minded of people’s differences, etc.  and as a matter of fact, I could loose a few pounds myself. And please don’t get irate because I call ourselves newbies, because we are all in fact new to digital. I do want to let you know about a condition I call H.D.A. which may affect you sooner or later after you get into watching DTV. I feel it is my duty during H.A.D.N.M to alert you of this condition and try to help you cope with the affects H.D.A. can have on a person.

What is H.D.A? High Definition Addiction. Simply put, a person may become so obsessed with HD programming, they will not watch anything else. It can lead to divorce and anti-social behaviour in more serious cases. I’m afraid there is no cure at the moment for H.D.A. I am working on a 12 step program for it, but so far research has not found a breakthrough.

So many people will resort to “Stretch-O-Vision”, widening the NTSC picture to 16:9 and causing every actor to look wide-faced, or fat. (My fat reference!) Once you do it, you get used to it, but I’m sure some TV Stars would cringe if they saw it. If you are getting a clean picture, Stretch-O-Vision is not all that bad, but I have seen many public businesses use this and frankly it gives DTV a bad impression on real newbies if the signal is a little noisy.

The picture stretching is based on real need though, as it helps prevent edge burn on Plasma and LCD displays. The likelihood of all American television programs being converted to 16:9 is not very high, if you consider classics like “I Love Lucy” and vintage programs; to me it would be as big a mistake like the colorized “Andy Griffith Shows”. Mayberry was never the same in color.

Newbies using their older TV’s will go the “postage stamp” route. Displaying a 16:9 picture on a 4:3 set causes gray bars at the top and bottom of the picture. When a program is in SD, black bars are added on each side, so the picture looks like a small postage stamp in the center of the screen. If you have larger screen TV, it’s tolerable and allows you to see the whole HD picture. It isn’t so cool on a smaller TV.

The HD Addict, will go to great lengths to get HD pictures. He will scoff at HD Lite or up-converted SD pictures. Consumer TV sets are now capable of showing the exact same resolution we broadcast. Older TV sets could never do that, and some people were very happy with VHS which usually had less than 200 lines of resolution. But as the HD fever grips a person, they may order cable, satellite, and install an antenna, just to feed the addiction.

That’s why I have stressed from the beginning, to take it slow at first, experiment, and as your addiction grows, you can advance to the next step. I beg of you, do not allow the addiction to take over the first week after you install your DTV receiver. Use Stretch-O-Vision as long as you can, then move on to the next level. Networks are making more HD available, although not fast enough for the hard-core addict, but more is coming. You just have to be a little patient. 

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