Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 June 15

= June 15 =

TV setting
I have an older TV circa 2005, a large cathode ray, much squarer than HD TVs. Everything looks wrong nowadays because they've changed the screen output or however you'd describe it. Calling Time Warner cable is utterly useless. Worst company ever but they have a monopoly so not much I can do. Anyway, I've played around with the settings and it doesn't seem to do much, but can anyone suggest the supposed best settings for my TV? I can supposedly choose for output resolution 480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i. In Picture size I have normal, zoom and stretch, and in aspect ratio I have 4 x 3 and 16 x 9. Lady in polka dot (talk) 03:57, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * My advice is for the US and Canada. If you live elsewhere, please tell us.  4x3 is the old analog aspect ratio, so you will want to change to 16x9, which is the new digital aspect ratio.  480, either i or p, is the old analog resolution, so you will want to change to either 720p or 1080i.  Now which of those you want will probably depend on the station, as some broadcast in each.  You might try each on each channel to see which is best, and write them down for later.  Next you have the problem that the 16x9 aspect ratio doesn't fit your physical screen.  The stretch option will stretch it vertically to fill the whole screen, which will make everybody look tall and thin while standing.  The zoom option will only show the middle of the picture, and cut off the right and left edges.  The normal option, I would guess, will put the entire image on the screen without stretching it, so you will have black bars at the top and bottom.  Each option has it's advantages, but you might want to change between them at different times.  For example, if something important is on the edges of the screen, you don't want the zoom option. StuRat (talk) 04:39, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * StuRat has given you a good start here. Allow me to jump to the end and say "You're probably going to need a new TV". At no point will you get to a place where you can just turn on a channel and know that your TV will display the picture correctly; you're going to have to fiddle with it - every time. And as more and more shows get broadcast in the 16:9 or other widescreeen aspect ratio, more and more of your screen will simply be black letterboxing - or you can go for the option to only watch the middle half of the picture as broadcast and simply miss out on everything to the left and right. You can obviously hold out as long as you want, but at no point will things "get better" for you - only worse. Matt Deres (talk) 13:33, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree fully with the advice given above, but if you are sentimentally attached to your current old technology, I can suggest two alternatives: Firstly, 80% of the action (on average) takes place in the centre of the picture  so just use the view that cuts out a little bit at each side and you will not miss much.  Secondly, I know people who have a stretched picture and have become so accustomed to it that they don't notice.  You could always tilt your screen forwards or back so that you actually see a 16 by 9 ratio when you view the vertically stretched picture.    D b f i r s   16:45, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * (Not sure why you smalled your text here, as it is an answer to the Q.) Since tilting the screen would just foreshorten the apparent vertical dimension, rather than doing that you might just as well use the "normal" option, which will give you the same result by putting black bars at the top and bottom. Incidentally, this has a couple advantages I have found:


 * 1) Closed captioning is then often in one of the black bars, not on top of the image. The people who make closed captioning seem to be just terrible at putting it someplace unobtrusive.  For example, when watching the weather forecast on the news, the CC here writes over all the numbers every time !


 * 2) Old CRTs are often blurry at the corners, and this avoids placing an image there.


 * 3) You never have to wait for software to boot up on a CRT TV, or deal with software errors. Of course, your digital-to-analog converter box has both flaws, but I just leave mine on to avoid boot errors.


 * Also, there are many good reasons to keep an old CRT. There's the environmental impact you avoid by not dumping those CRTs in the trash.  And, since China seems to make all TVs this day, I don't feel good about sending a thousand dollars to a non-democratic nation which still censors any mention of the Tiananmen Square Massacre and is building  up it's military while threatening it's neighbors.  (Are any TVs made elsewhere and sold in the US ?)  StuRat (talk) 13:46, 16 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Unless there's something really weird about the US, I'm guessing there are plenty of made in Vietnam, made in Thailand, made in Indonesia and made in Malaysia TVs there. Vietnam of course is often called the new China due to effect of rising wages in China on manufacturing there although as that source mentions Cambodia and Laos are often seen as the new Vietnams (may be Myanmar is coming up too). (Although Vietnam is also non democratic with active political censorship. Thailand seems to temporarily? be as well. Malaysia and to a lesser extent Indonesia are flawed democracies and you could probably say the same for their political censorship.) Probably some made in Korea and made in Japan ones as well.
 * And I'm guessing others. For example do you really have no more made in Mexico TVs there? suggests otherwise. That and    suggests unsurprisingly there are some made in US ones as well at least for larger ones (and from you price I guess you're looking at a 100" TV or a UHD or something?). Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if less than 50% of TVs sold in the US are not made in China.
 * Ignoring since this is the RD, the complicated issue of who and how much they actually benefits from the money that does end up in China, it's worth remembering 'made in' is a fairly complicated question in itself . For a TV, it probably indicates where the TV was assembled. The panel be it LCD or Plasma could easily be made in Korea or Japan or yes China, wherever the TV it self is assembled. The microprocessors themselves are another layer of 'made in'. Many of the other electronic components may be made in China, but possibly also Japan or Taiwan or elsewhere. So regardless of where your TV is 'made', the thousand dollars that you mentioned, of your US$4000 purchase price that actually goes towards making the TV (random guess I'm not sure if that's right) is not all going to end up in one place whereever your TV is nominally made.
 * Nil Einne (talk) 15:03, 16 June 2014 (UTC)


 * So it looks like our TV purchasing money is going to support nondemocratic nations, no matter what we do. All the more reason to keep the "old gray mule" running as long as possible. StuRat (talk) 16:16, 16 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Doubly so since there's no point in watching the news on a 60" TV if all they tell you is, "BTW, the really interesting news are only available via app, on a 3" display barely adequate for a caller ID" – am I the only one that thinks it defeats the very purpose of news TV?


 * About energy saving, even a CRT has to run for some years until it consumes more energy than production and shipping did.


 * Oh, the small 16/9 boxes ain't too bad when it comes to power-on delay. It's not as fast as a CRT but it definitely beats a CRT to full brightness. - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 12:06, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * A typical situation I have is that I'm watching Jeopardy, and want to hear the questions and answers, but need to go to the kitchen to tend the food I'm cooking before it burns, as it would if I waited for a commercial. I put a TV in the kitchen just for this problem.  I placed a CRT TV in there so I don't have to wait for the damn thing to "boot".  While it does take a while for a CRT without the instant-on feature (which keeps the CRT warmed up all the time) to get to full brightness, I get audio almost immediately, so I don't miss anything. StuRat (talk) 16:32, 20 June 2014 (UTC)