Re: Bad TV

Jon, speaking of bad TV, I thought about you when I saw this essay in the Wall Street Journal.

It's about the proliferation of all these high resolution, wide screen television screens—capable of producing stunning pictures—invariably displaying a cruddy image that is also stretched into a fun house mirror echo of what the director intended. I know this vexes you sorely as well.

A snippet:

"Many owners of wide-screen TVs don't make the distinction. Since they paid a premium for the width, they want their programs to fill the screen; never mind that 4:3 programs are correctly displayed on 16:9 panels only with black bars flanking the image. So people set their TVs to stretch the picture, or allow their TVs to set themselves. Either way, the result is distortion -- compact cars resemble stretch limos, puffy faces look like their cheeks have been pulled out in opposite directions."

This epidemic extends to my own home. My wife and daughters tolerate my diligent use of the remote to switch the aspect ratio of the TV picture depending upon whether we're watching a HD channel or not. But they never bother. Even worse, I'll walk in and they'll be watching a program in standard definition when we have HD version of the same network one click up the dial!

If we actually get to that glorious Hi-Def television future we've been promised for a long time now, it will a miracle. Too many people don't seem to "get it."