Why do wide screen TV 's make people look fat?

Question

I was looking at tv's at Wal-Mart . They were showing a regular dvd on all their tv's with a movie that had black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. All the lcd wide-screens still had the bars (i played around with some of the tv's for a while and never could get the bars to go away) I thought the whole idea of a wide-screen was that you didn't have to look at those supid bars! Anyway all the people looked fatter on the wide-screen tv's than they did on the regular old square tube type tv's. People just looked more natural on the old style tv's. Is there a way to stretch the picture up and down (not just zoom in on it) on these new fangled televisions?

Answer 1

You're exactly right about how people look, because video is not made for those kinds of TVs--they are made for the traditional kinds of TVs with a 4:3 ratio (widescreens are a 16:9 ratio, which means the picture is going to look all stretched out across). There is sometimes a feature on the menu of the TV that will allow you to adjust the picture ratio to 16:9 rather than 4:3. I have directv, so I tried to change the ratio using directv's menu...doesn't seem to make a difference. It might work, however, if you can find this feature on the actual TV's menu and change it...changing the ratio changes the fat look. In order to get those bars to go away, you'd be looking for the stuff on the menu that allows you to change what kind of screen it is, i.e. "pan," "widescreen," etc.

Answer 2

It is because the original video was shown in aspect ratio 4:3, (or 1.33:1) When you put that same signal into a TV that is other than 4:3, such as 16:9 (or 1.66:1) it will look non-linear. Example: a round shape in original 4:3 aspect will appear oval in a 16:9 display. Usually, on the tv menu system, there is a way to keep the original apect intact. Of course this will mean that there will be bars on the sides with no video info in them, sometimes gray or black. This is not the same as the top and bottom bars, that's a whole different story.

Answer 3

The pixal count is the same between squares and rectangles. In the rectangles, the pixals are more spread out so the people look fatter. As far as the bars go, that's either part of the reedit of the movie (found in older movies) to DVD/VHS or you want to change the resolution through software.

Answer 4

Only if you set it for widescreen and the programme is 4:3

Answer 5

Wide screen has the bars because it shows a wider picture, not a stretched out picture. People look fatter because the screen is bigger.

Answer 6

And people are shelling out tons of money to watch people who have heads shaped like watermelons. Oh well.