Sage TV Standard Def on 1080p 16x9 TV

[valerio]

I am pondering on finally buying a 16x9 flat screen TV (still have an old 32" CRT), a Samsung LCD LNT4665F 46" 1080p, and I was wondering if anybody here could let me know how the image from a standard definition SageTV appears on a 16x9 flat panel?

My worry is not only on quality since I of course would not expect the SD image to be as good quality as a HD image, rather on aspect ratio. Since all my recordings will be SD for some time, I am wondering on whether I will see the 4x3 SD video from Sage with with black pillars on the side or whether Sage or the TV would resize it to 16x9 and if so will the image look distorted, i.e. would people look 33% fatter? I am planning on connecting the PC to the TV via a DVI>HDMI cable or via SVHS out.

I am actually puzzled that Samsung recommends that one should not watch a 4x3 image on this LCD TV longer than 2 hrs. I thought that only Plasmas were very sensitive to burn-ins, and only for the first 100 hrs.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

[mayamaniac]

SageTV is no different than SD from any other sources. The only problem is ultimately up to the user's preference, what bothers you more, the black pillars or the fat/short looking people? You'll have to choose between the two. SageTV has an advantage when it comes to 16x9 widescreen videos, where it knows to properly display it. The problem is with letterboxed content in SD. There's no way to get it looking right unless your HDTV has a "zoom" feature to crop out the top and bottom black bars. This "zoom" is also a third alternative to get rid of the black side pillars without making people short/fat looking, if you don't mind having the top and bottom of the video being cut off. It might be annoying see part of the actors hair out of frame, or not able to see sports scores or news tickers at the bottom though. Again, this is a user preference. The panorama stretch view is also another option, but not all HDTVs has this feature.

As for the burn-ins, SageTV has the "Orbiting" feature in Detailed Setup to solve this problem. It basically, very slowly, moves the SD content, oscillating left and right, so no burn-ins.