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General discussion

you see less with some HDTV?

Jun 4, 2005 1:34PM PDT

Today I visited Costco and saw Pioneer 43" HDTV and Panasonic 42" EDTV side-by-side. I noticed that the Pioneer HDTV was showing less picture, that is, it was cutting picture from both sides. The Panasonic EDTV was showing more picture.
In one frame there were 4 persons on the screen on the Panasonic one and Pioneer was showing 3 and a half.
Is it some picture setting (zoom etc) that was not correctly set on the Pioneer one, or is my teory below true?
The Pioneer HDTV has a resolution of 1024 x 768, so that width-to-height ratio is 1024/768=1.33
Panasonic EDTV has a resolution of 852 x 480, so the width-to-height ratio is 852/480=1.77
That means we see 1.77-1.33=0.44 less in most HDTVs with resolution of 1024x768. And that is why I was seeing only 3 and half persons on the Pioneer model.

Most plasma HDTVs being sold today are not truely HDTV anyways. If my theory is true then I will just buy an EDTV and not bother with the more expensive HDTV for now.

Please let me know if you guys can shed any light on this topic.
Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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re
Jun 22, 2005 5:11AM PDT

i guess it all just depends on your motivation. I want to be the best at everything i do so its just motivation for me.

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sears tv guy
Jun 22, 2005 12:38PM PDT

Hi,
Can you explain what happens when a 1024x768 16:9 HDTV receives a HD signal of 1280x720? How is the picture displayed?

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well
Jun 22, 2005 2:04PM PDT

I actually got my first look at a 1024X768 widescreen tv this past week. Its the new samsung 42" HD plasma. Even though 1024X768 = 1.33 or 4:3 it still shows the correct aspect. Which this kind of dumbfounded me to see that it actually was showing in widescreen. The only thing that I could come up with is that is has some type of scaler to proportion the picture to a widecreen image. But if anyone else knows for sure I am intrigued myself as to the reasoning behind this resolution.

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sorry
Jun 23, 2005 2:20PM PDT

I forgot to mention that with the 1024X768 it shows the exact same amount of picture as the 1366X768. The people and sides aren't cut off. After looking tonight it seems to me that the 1024 tv will have the horizontal pixels spaced further apart in order to achieve the widescreen 1.77 aspect ratio. I will do the math when at work sat between both a 1366 and a 1024, though I think my theory above should be correct but if anyone knows for sure I would to know because I am interested myself in the reasoning behind the 1024

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well...
Jun 24, 2005 1:54AM PDT

resolution costs money & that TV looks to be a dime saver. If it has a 4:3 pixel ratio and a 16:9 screen ratio, than its video processors scale down (compress) the image horizontally & display it on the pixels. if this same video processor was displaying the image on a 4:3 screen, then people would appear thin & everything would be mushed, but its not squished because they physically stretch the pixels out (either with spacing or with elongated pixels).

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so I was right?
Jun 24, 2005 2:07AM PDT

That was the best conclusion the I could come up with and it seems luke pretty much agrees. And yes I do agree with the dime saver part. Last year EDTV's ruled the market. Now it seems people are wanting to get HD models and to make them more affordable some manufacturers are making HD but cutting the resolution short once again.