Thank you, thank you, thank you ohohyodafarted. It is good to read "notes of wisdom" from someone who can make honest, balanced opinions after having seen both sides of an issue, rather than just bash new technology because it is new. (How ironic is the concept of complaining about the new TV standards and government involvement, in a forum specifically dedicated to
enjoying and preserving what was at the time a new TV standard that owed its availability to the government??)
What most people do not realize yet is that digital TV signals almost always are much lower power than the same station's analog signal. When the analog stuff gets turned off in 2009, finally, the stations should be boosting their digital signals up to "normal" power levels. Fringe reception will then be a non-issue for many people, and remember, the signal they receive will be flawless, ghost- and snow-free.
Black bars are
a good thing. The real travesty, still perpetrated by ignorant programmers such as HBO even in its HD version, is to mutilate movies to make them fill a 4:3 screen. Are there
really people out there who would want every picture in an art gallery, every Picasso, Rembrandt, or da Vinci to have its top and bottom, or left and right sides, cut off so they all fit some matched-size frame? Do people not understand the concept is the same with motion visual programming? It is now the 21st Century... If you want to watch modern TV programming and have it fill your screen, get a wide-screen TV. Do not worry, no high-def TV programs will be produced in any aspect ratio other than the 16:9 that will fill all of your new screen with light, if that is so important. (Of course, all the "old" stuff will have black bars on the sides of the new TV; should we then complain about them not "fixing" those shows?)
