13 INCHES OF FUN

So the title may be a bit misleading but whats creative license for anyway? Well, with some left over tax return money I decided to buy a HDTV. I settled on a 23 inch Samsung LCD. Not huge I know, but it did pass the WAF (wife acceptance factor) and it was within my allowance.. er budget. I wanted something bigger, but it was not to be. At least not yet. Its been about 2 months and Im really happy with the TV so far. I dont have any high def channels in my area, so I cant really appreciate the extra resoultion. DVDs look great on my progressive scan player. The old XBOX looks ok, but I suspect that a 360 will look a ton better. Ill be getting one shortly. But my main gripe concerns cable tv. For the most part it looks pretty good. The digital channels look better than the others but, of course, most of the shows I watch are on CBS. And we dont get that in HD.  All the standard def channels are in the 4:3 ratio to fit the old square tvs so this means that those of us with 16:9 get black bars on both sides of the picture. That effectively reduces my 23 inches of screen to a 19 inch square picture. Pretty big step down from ym 27 inch CRT.  And when commercials are broadcast in a "fake" widescreen (so it will look widescreen on a square tv) I have black bars on all four sides. Now Im watching basically a 13 inch widescreen tv. Cool huh? I dont really watch commercials but it is hilarious to see black bars on all 4 sides of the picture. I know that you can zoom and stretch the picture to make it fit the screen for movies and such, but all the stretch modes look like crap, peoples faces all fat and squished.  The zoom modes usually cut too much off so peoples heads are truncated or they are talking to people who are off screen. Hopefully all of this will become a non-issue on a few years when they are making more shows in widescreen, and when people who live out in te boonies,like me, can actually get HDTV programming. My cable company said maybe in a year or so. I could switch to DISH or Direct TV, but even they only have a few channels in HD right now, so it isnt worth the extra expense in my opinion.

Good thing I have Net Flix. I think Ill upgrade so I can have  more than 3 movies at a time!