My two year old Panasonic TV seems to "fill the black" in auto mode
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I've had a HD Panasonic Viera TV (not sure what model) for a couple of years now, and it's been great except for one thing. Fore some reason, if the aspect ratio is set to auto, then the picture will try and automatically stretch itself to fill as much of the screen as possible. It can also misbehave. So if I watch an old 4:3 Simpsons episode through it, not only will the aspect ratio be stretched so that everything looks fat, but the scene will suddenly become all tall in a TV scene of the programme because my TV recognises the border of the TV as being dark. I've also got issues when in 16:9 through my Wii like this. For some reason, "auto" seems to mean that the TV will focus on filling the entire screen, regardless of maintaining the original aspect ratio. So it doesn't only stretch 4:3 content so that it fat, but will also make something all tall if there is letterboxing involved. I can fix the issue by manually switching from 16:9 to 4:3 depending on the programme that I am watching, but it does get a bit annoying. The only TVs that I know which do this are my own and my grandparent's, both of which are very similar, despite not being identical, and they are both Panasonic and of a similar age. Do any other brands have such an aspect ratio issue? If so, what are they?
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Many sets I've get it wrong whatever format you feed it, even standard 16:9 gets stretched and cropped.
Please note that if you are watching 16:9 and you manually select 4:3 the TV will remain 4:3 as you've forced a manual selection. What you need to do is select 4:3 and then change to a different input (such as the TV tuner), the aspect ration will then switch and afterwards carry on auto switching - all this is assuming it's the same as mine.
Auto on my Viera TV is crap and I never use it, what I want is to see the original aspect ratio for which 4:3 is used. (The exception is Sky where I have to view 1080i and so I need to manually switch to 4:3 when viewing 4:3 material).
Black cannot possibly burn in any lcd or plasma display. The three Red Green and Blue subpixels are turned off. ie Black = Red 0, Green 0 and Blue 0, White = Red 255, Green 255 and Blue 255)
Sorry, but completely and utterly untrue - (aside from the fact that you can't get screen burn on an LCD anyway) watching 4:3 with black bars either side is the worst possible way to cause screen burn on a Plasma.
Screen burn is uneven 'wear' on the phosphors, the black bars at the side means those parts don't age, while the rest do - this causes the sides of the screen to be brighter than the rest.
As far as I'm aware Plasma manuals inform you of this?, and certainly service training courses did.
Once the Plasma TV is 'run in' (and past the major burn-in stage) it's not much of a problem, but it's VERY important with a new Plasma NOT to leave it running for extended periods with 4:3 and black bars down the sides (which is why Plasma sets add grey bars if they are doing the formatting, so as to reduce the effect).
Having seen severe image retention or screen burn (or whatever the LCD equivalent is) I would whole heartedly disagree with the statement that it doesn't happen on LCDs. Admittedly, the screens I viewed were extremely low quality and being used in a hotel for images that were static for very long periods of time. The result was shadows where all the lines previously were & this was on multiple TV's. The screens were no more than 32" & I even found an uncovered one to check it was an LCD, which it was.
That's exactly what I do. There are, however, a few channels which show programming IN 16:9 that was made in 4:3, causing "forced stretchyvision" with a logo of a normal proportion but a distorted image. I have to force 4:3 on 16:9 then, and then when I change it back, it will reset all of the settings to auto, so I have to manually find a 4:3 programme and select 4:3 again that way.
I have that but after I've "forced" 4:3 all I do is select TV then back to HDMI and all is fine. If all you have is TV then just select analogue then back again. At least that works on mine.