Watching DVDs on a large 29 or 33" 4:3 TV

[Glenzo]

I enjoy viewing this way, the picture's more richer and terrestrial broadcasts are clearer. I do go for Widescreen DVDs and not the Fullscreen versions. Am I being bold??

Particularly people in US/Can seem to have this preference

What are others views on this?

[charlaph]

I can't say I prefer it as I've never owned a widescreen set, but certainly watching widescreen DVDs in anamorphic 16:9 mode on my old Sony (before it broke) was very enjoyable.

Of course on a 29" screen, I only got a viewing area that was an inch or two smaller than a 28" widescreen set would be, which was okay for my needs, but most people would prefer to get the most viewable area for their money, so for DVD watching, a widescreen set is preferable - image quality should be no better on a 4:3 set than on an equivalent quality widescreen set.

Certainly in my mind the remainder of my viewing habits is the clincher, despite having Sky, a lot of the programmes I watch still aren't broadcast in widescreen, so a 4:3 set for this is preferable. With an eye to the future, if I buy a replacement for my busted Sony then I'll be going widescreen for the simple reason that there are no 4:3 sets with prog scan capabilities (to the best of my knowledge)

[Glenzo]

On my Panasonic 4:3 29" if I set the DVD player to output a 16:9 picture I get only small bars for a 2:35:1 Framed DVD and no bars for a 1:85:1 Framed DVD, just as I do on my widescreen TV.

I'm not a big lover of Widescreen CRTs but I think by the look of Plasma it's gonna replace this with much better quality!

Cheers!

[Glenzo]

Now what puts me off Plasmas is this talk that they don't last very long?

What do you reckon??

[Battlestar]

Ok, how long would you like a plasma to last?
Most good ones will have a half life of around 30000 hours or even more(must admit I am not an expert on this though). By half life I mean that beacuse the plasma is a decaying device , it takes 30000 hours or more to get to half brightness. Now even at 10 hours a day it would take 3000 days to get this point. Thats 8.21 years!!!!!!! and at that point just turn the brigtness up