HD-DVD and Blue Ray Black Bars

lol, well lucky for me, my Magnavox 37" has 7 different settings for sizes , but that would piss me off really bad too!

Man, and I thought this sort of thinking had been defeated by now. Some of those HBO HD movies have their sides chopped (not original aspect ratio). Some might have been chopped differently from their original film format (super 35), in which there were mulitple ways they could have been cropped. Like Titanic for instance, where there was a "preferred" correct aspect ratio, but none of the 2.35, 1.33, and 16x9 were the actual filmed.

you can buy a scaler that will allow you to vertically stretch the image to fill the screen while maintaining the full 2.35 width. Don't confuse this with the Zoom function that your TV may have for two reasons: 1) most will zoom to fill the screen but chop the width and/or will lose picture clarity. Some will counter that a vertical stretch distorts the image but with a "dedictated" scaler and a large screen I don't see any material distortion AND is MUCH less distracting than the black bars. Bad news, scalers will cost $700+.

It's a matter of preference of course. I can't stand the black bars AND I want to see the movie as intended by the director so for me the money spent on a scaler was worth it. When I upgrade my system I will look into going with a projector and screen set-up using Constant Height lenses for the "perfect" (but expensive) solution. Life was much simpler when there was just black & white TV's and over the air antennas, then you were happy with just a littel bit of snow as long as you could see and hear "something"....

Also, be sure to check out Tech reviews on any Blu-Ray disks before you buy as some of the conversions (and picture quaility) are worse than the standard DVD's......