Hat Trick endcap typo

When my household first went digital in January 1999, it was almost 18 months before we got a widescreen
telly, and we still had a conventional 21 inch 4:3 square TV set in the living room. I'd set the Sky digibox to
display all widescreen programming in letterbox mode. I didn't like "centre cutout", and still dont like it

My dad somewhat disliked this. First time he saw a Saturday evening widescreen broadcast on BBC ONE,
he sternly asked me, "Why is there only half a picture, have you broke the bl**dy telly?" I explained that
it was being shown in widescreen, and the full broadcast picture was being displayed on screen. It was
at this point that it seemed that my brief explanation and gone straight over his head, and he briefly
turned into a north Manchester version of Jim Royle . . . "Widescreen, my arse! Put it right!"

So, I reluctantly pressed Services on the remote control, and navigated to the Picture Settings menu.
"What the 'ell yer doing?!?" my father blurted out. I then explained that I was switching off the setting
called Letterbox Mode. He replied, "Letterbox? We're trying t' watch telly, not post bloody letters!"

After a few weeks of near repeat performances of this, I eventually got fed up off going through the menus
to switch Letterbox Mode on and off, and my dad got fed up of complaining about it. Eventually, one day
when I was watching a widescreen program in Letterbox Mode, my dad walked into the room with a new
pair of glasses on, specifically for watching TV. He said, "I've bought these glasses today, for watching
yer silly letterbox wide pictures on t' telly!" At last, it seems that I'd brought him round to accepting the
widescreen broadcast being displayed in Letterbox Mode. This victory was short lived.

When I purchased a new widescreen TV in May 2000, my dad was happy to be able to watch widescreen
programs without the thick black bars at the top and bottom of the picture. Only trouble is, he now goes
into whinge mode when a 4:3 program is broadcast. I personally prefer to watch these in the pillarbox
setting with the thick black margins on either side of the 4:3 picture. But my dad now says, perhaps
somewhat rather sarcastically "Why are watching a portable? The picture's too bloody small!"

There's just no pleasing some people! Whenever my dad watches a 4:3 picture, he zooms the picture
to fill the screen, but then complains when the top of people's heads suddenly disappear! It's at this
point, I'm tempted to say, "Why is there only half a picture?!?". Sometimes, when he's in the room,
the telly ends up switched to "stretchyvision", and he then complains about people looking fat
or squashed, although to be honest, I can't blame him for that! IMO, "stretchyvision" sucks!

When I eventually get around to buying a DVD player (a purchase I keep putting off as it's not an
immediate priority) I guess my dad will only start whinging again when he sees that most films
on DVD are displayed in cinemascope style format much wider than the 16:9 stuff on TV!

Sadly it's people like your dad who are getting broadcasters into using cropporama mode.

My dad is in his mid-late 60's, and up until 4½ years ago, he'd only ever watched TV in the traditional 4:3 format.

Funnily enough, he doesn't mind (or probably just doesn't notice) when a program, that was previously 4:3 has
been cropped to 14:9 to fit into a 16:9 frame, with neither thick nor thin black bars on either side of the picture.

He's never complained about this when he's watching North West Tonight on the digital version of BBC ONE.
Mind you, watching BBC NWT looks better this way on a widescreen telly, otherwise if we were watching it
via analog (if we could still watch analog TV in the living room) it would inevitably end up in stretchyvision!

I always presumed it was so MM would have more impact. The BBC Millenium sting wouldn't have the same effect if it semd MIM MM

Talking of Widescreen. I got the Express TV guide today after it "fell in" to the rest of my papers. Why are "Widescreen" programmes not flagged on C4 or five? BBC and ITV all have widescreen shows flagged in it but 4 and 5 don't.

My dad is just like that!

He's 80, my mum's 35 & my nana's 90. They all moan at me when i put the widescreen tv in to the correct aspect ratio for 4:3 programs (he was complaining that the people looked fatter than normal) which ment that 4:3 programs had bars on the side. and my family being the plonkers they are think i fvcked up the tv. just because i'm 16 they think i'm some dumb sh!t who can't work a tv.
(Ironicly they can't even change the channel without my help!!!)

North West Tonight doesn't look good in Letterbox mode on a 14" Televideo, but I still watch it anyway. I only have it in Letterbox as I can't stand the picture when it is in 4:3, though it looks efficient, it's a bugger when things are cut out.

Though when we had our Widescreen TV installed, the installer was quite stupid, as we still had the NTL Box on 4:3 Letterbox mode, so he altered the TV settings on 'Cinema' and made all the channels look the same, but I altered it and it looks better.

But I must say that I have a 'moaning dad', as we had Digital installed in 2000, I switched the mode to 4:3 Letterbox, when we still had a 4:3 TV, but when he saw it for the first time, he said no and that he didn't like it like that, but when I explained to him about Widescreen, he went..

"Oh Yeah, you get an extra couple of inches"

But like many people my folks were annoyed as Coronation Street was in 4:3 and everyother programme was in 16:9, which meant them switching the picture format on the TV. But it's a good TV, as it has Dolby Pro Logic, it makes Countdown look like something which has the sound of a movie at the cinema.

Fortunately, my parents got their widescreen TV just before christmas when I was staying over at their house, so I was able to spend a bit of time fiddling about with the settings and getting everything right. Which took a bit of trial and error, since it was new to me - I still didn't have a widescreen TV myself at this point - and neither of the manuals for the TV and digibox really told you how to set it up properly.

My parents do understand that some programmes are in widescreen and some aren't, and don't seem bothered by it. In fact, when they bought the TV they took me along because they reckoned I'd know what questions to ask in the shop (which is all very well, though as it turned out while I knew the questions, the shop people didn't know the answers) because my dad specifically didn't want "everybody looking fat". So they got off on the right foot with it, though my mum in particular doesn't seem to notice if it's wrong - I once arrived to find her and my sister watching the film "A Bug's Life" on BBC ONE. If they'd used the digibox, they'd have got the full picture in its proper ratio, but they were watching the analogue transmission: 16:9 letterbox in a 4:3 frame stretched out to the full width of the widescreen set. Not nice!