What really annoys me is....

[MSIC]

... when you see a widescreen TV , but it is set to full-screen (4:3) ratio, although is stretched to fill the screen, and there are black bars at the top and bottom!

Aaaarghh
I have seen this so many times, particularly at airports on those screens that hang overhead.

What is worse I think is when it is in a shop, supposed to be advertising a TV - how shoddy is that!

And whilst i'm on the subject, whenever I am asked to show someone/do something on some friends widescreen laptop and they have it set to 1024 x 768 stretched !!!
The last time I saw this, I changed the preferences to a native 1200 x 800 resolution AND GOT TOLD IT NOW LOOKED ALL WIERD.

[GrahamGarside]

I hate looking at screens with the wrong ratio. My dad bought himself a 32" widescreen and when he's watching a show on freeview thats still in 4:3 he leaves it stretched to widescreen mode making everyone look really fat. And when he watches a dvd in letterbox format he stretches it to fill the screen making everyone look really thin. I'd sooner have the borders and right image geometry any day but he cares more about the screen being filled.

[Funkstar]

yeah i see this a lot and it annoys me too.

[nichomach]

I just assumed that the BBC were employing actors raised on heavy-gravity worlds...

Seriously, yes, I agree, and I also get wound up when you buy users a perfectly good TFT (even spending the extra to ensure they get DVI), and you tell them "Now, if the text or icons are too small for you, we can change the size of the text however much you want, and we can make the icons bigger". Come back next day, and they've ****ed about with the resolution, changing it down to 1024x768, or in extreme cases 800x600.

[dave87]

Heh, better to increase the size of the icons than decrease the resolution

But yes, it does bug me too, especially when they bugger it up by going the wrong way on the slider (ie higher than the monitor can display, just to see what happened...)

[Steve B]

another thing that annoys me is when you go to comet or currys to look at their "fantastic picture 1080i screens" and they're streaming pal through it :/

[steve threlfall]

... when you see a widescreen TV , but it is set to full-screen (4:3) ratio, although is stretched to fill the screen, and there are black bars at the top and bottom!

Aaaarghh
I have seen this so many times, particularly at airports on those screens that hang overhead.

What is worse I think is when it is in a shop, supposed to be advertising a TV - how shoddy is that!

And whilst i'm on the subject, whenever I am asked to show someone/do something on some friends widescreen laptop and they have it set to 1024 x 768 stretched !!!
The last time I saw this, I changed the preferences to a native 1200 x 800 resolution AND GOT TOLD IT NOW LOOKED ALL WIERD.

Hope you changed their screensaver to n00b!111111111

[Dreaming]

My friend once changed his screen res to something ridiculously small, and couldn't change it back again because the display properties screen was bigger than the screen.

[SHare]

My friend once changed his screen res to something ridiculously small, and couldn't change it back again because the display properties screen was bigger than the screen.

I've seen that one before too. Luckily it was the old PCI graphics card so I could pull it out and stick it in a different slot making windows reinstall it and set the resolution back to something normal.

[nichomach]

My friend once changed his screen res to something ridiculously small, and couldn't change it back again because the display properties screen was bigger than the screen.

Yep, awkward; you can get around it by doing an Alt, left arrow, down arrow and choosing Move. You then use the arrow keys to move the form around to where you want, and press Enter to fix it there.

[Dreaming]

I just pressed tab and then played with the slider, then tab again and pressed ok (had counted how many times you need to press it on another comp).

[bigblue]

I've been into AV gear for years and have a a BFO Wide TV, speakers and kit in the living room. Yet when we have guests round, and the TV is displaying a 4:3 picture with sidebars they insist on "helpfully" telling me "oh, you can press a button and it fills the whole screen y'know"

Then I usually get a sarky look when I say that it's meant to be like that. The girlfriends brother especially is a bit of a nightmare. He even told me one time "no, listen, what you do is go into the Sky box menu, and change the second location picture setting"

Most times now I just say "oh, thanks for that" as they do think they're being helpful but it's a wee bit patronising when I'm obviously into AV gear.

[Funkstar]

I can see the point in filling the screen for some things.

I was flicking through channels tonight and noticed E4 and E4+1 are displaying 4:3 just now. For regular trash TV i'm only watching because it is on, i like the screen filled. DVDs etc then they should have bars where applicable.

It's having things stretched in such a way that you loose picture off the sides (news tickers and the clock for example) that really get my goat.

[bluesatin]

I swear that on my 4:3 normal CRT TV that freeview automatically stretches half the channels off the edge of my screen.

And I can't do anything about it, maybe it's just my freeview box or something :/

[GrahamGarside]

I swear that on my 4:3 normal CRT TV that freeview automatically stretches half the channels off the edge of my screen.

And I can't do anything about it, maybe it's just my freeview box or something :/

It should have a button on the remote called wide or format which when you have the screen format set to 4:3 in the menu will flip between letterbox, partial stretch and full stretch all maintaining the right aspect but with differant size top and bottom borders.

[bluesatin]

Yeh I've switched through all the formats my freeview box will give me, but I still notice some things are stretched off the screen.

I don't think it's a major amount, but I still notice it and it annoys me