DTV on standard 4:3 TVs and CRT damage

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

What the cable co gets is a 'HD' pillar boxed 16:9 stream that they then letter box. The final result is a 4:3 image on a 4:3 screen that looks like it is under-scanned on all sides. : Effectively, and needlessly giving me a smaller screen size than the set I'm watching.

That screen size would approximately simulate the pre-war 441i scanning standard. Showing the resolution that pre-war standard would have given us, but not in color. Maybe if TV stayed with 441i, the NTSC chroma subcarrier might have been right near 3MHz... Or that CBS sequential system might have become the color standard...

All it would take would be some kind of flag in the signal that would tell the display which aspect ratio it is.

Some decoder boxes do have a "set by program" aspect ratio setting, so there are flags broadcast.