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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>A friend of mine has a problem with his new TV that
I thought MythTV might be able to solve. He has a widescreen TV with a
16:9 aspect ratio, but there are no HGTV channels in our area, and our cable
system provides the standard 4:3 aspect ratio picture. It's still a great
TV for watching widescreen DVDs, but when watching regular TV he has to either
watch a picture with gray bars on each side or use one of the TVs scaling
features to fill up the whole screen.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>For some shows, the scaling feature work great, but
for many, the picture with the gray bars looks the best. The problem is
that the TV comes with VERY BIG WARNING LABELS saying to watch it in that mode
only 20% of the time as it could cause the picture tube to wear unevenly.
We asked about this problem at a couple of stores, and one salesman said that he
had indeed seen store sets which had been left in the "gray bar mode" 24/7 for a
long time which had developed noticeable bars down the sides when displaying in
full screen modes.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I did a little online research, and it seems like a
lot of TVs have this problem. Some of them have some screen saver features
to attempt to combat the problem, but I haven't seen any that really seem
satisfactory. So I have some questions for the vast base of wisdom on this
list:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>1) What experience has everyone had with
this?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>2) What TV features are there to combat the
problem?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>3) Could a feature be added to MythTV to
combat the problem?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Here's my "perfect" solution: when displaying
a 4:3 aspect ratio picture, for each line of pixels, repeat the leftmost pixel
out to the left and repeat the rightmost picture out to the right. The
normal changing of the TV picture would cause the repeated pixels to change,
thus saving the screen from unequal aging. The PERFECT TV would have
sliding doors to cover the repeated sections of the screen - I know even MythTV
can't do THAT, but my friend and I could probably kludge up something that would
work - curtains or something.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Any ideas or information are welcome.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Drew</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>