HD and "widescreen"

[kentauros]

Can someone tell me why some channels take a 4:3 show or movie and stretch it to fit a 16 : 9 screen, then have the gall to call it "widescreen"? And why do people accept it that way? Everything is squashed, people are too wide and not tall enough, no circle is a circle any longer and so on. Even if it's something I really want to watch, I won't because the effect is way too distracting.

I'm probably just gonna have to start writing to channels and complaining when they do that kind of cheat, because that's all it really is, cheating to fill the screen. It's really mind-blowing that in an age where more and more households have some kind of widescreen TV that movies are still shown pan&scan and people can't accept that 4:3 TV shows don't look better when squashed or worse, cropped, to fit a 16 : 9 format. There's nothing in the world wrong with letterboxing or whatever it's called for black bars on the left and right when in 4:3 format...

[rcrush]

1. They are cheap

Its like when some HD channels take a standard def program and stretch it out to make people think its high def. They do that with reruns of Bones on TNT and other crap. Especially when a channel has just made the HD transition and doesnt have all their programming switched over yet.

[kentauros]

2. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

And after reading so much of notalwaysright.com. I'm afraid a reasoned complaint like mine would get drowned out by all the mindless ones that can't understand it's simply not better to stretch or crop an old show to fill the screen :(

[rcrush]

3. Whats funny is that if you go out and buy a DVD season of Bones it will be in the right ratio

But the reruns of Bones on TNT are all stretched out and ugly. At least the movie channels have it right for the most part. Too bad I cant afford them anymore.