Big Screen TV Questions.

[Memo]

Ok. Well i'm shopping around for a rear projection TV. I really dont know JACK about them so I was hoping some of you guys might help out. I probably wont buy it for about a month since I won't be in my apartment till then, so I have a while to research. Anyways, I've seen the TheaterWide series from Toshiba and I like the picture. The 40" Model (40H80) seems pretty cool and I have seen it on the web for around $1600 (crazyeddie.com, Cnet certified). I have a few questions. What does normal TV look like on the wide screen projection TVs. I am guessing not all shows come in the 16:9 ratio. Also, what is the advantage of getting the wide screen TVs. Im guessing if you just got a bigger normal screen TV, Then when you viewed widescreen, the picture would look just as good. And for some reason, the Widescreen ones are smaller but more expensive. To tell you the truth, I want to spend as little as I can without compromising product and picture quality. I want to later hook up a nice DVD player and A/V Receiver to build a home theatre system to it. All input accepted :-)

[Black Francis]

I actually have the model you mentioned.....Toshiba 40H80....and I have loved it ever since I bought it back in November. I bought a widescreen because watching movies (DVD) is the main reason I bought the TV. I have it hooked up to Dish Network, and the picture is pretty good, but not spectacular. You can watch regular TV five different ways....

Standard gives you a 4:3 image and puts grey bars on each side of the picture....I never use this

Full streches the image to fill the TV.....I never use this for regular TV, but always for DVD's

Theater Wide 1,2,or 3 give various versions of stretch and crops to fill the screen.....I use 2, which just zooms the picture in and cuts off a small portion of the top and bottom of the picture......

If you are going to use this TV for mostly standard TV viewing, then I would get a 4:3 model instead.....If you are going to use this TV for primarily watching DVD's, then this is the TV for you....

If you do buy a High-Def TV, regardless of 4:3 or 16:9, then you will want to get a decent progressive scan DVD player.....I use the Toshiba 6200.

If you buy a rear projection TV, then you need to spend some time calibrating it......pick up Video Essentials or AVIA.....these are DVD's that walk you through the process. If you really want a spectacular picture, then have it ISF calibrated....but this is expensive.

The very first thing you should do when you turn on a brand new projection TV is turn down the contrast and brightness....these are usually set very high so that the TV will look good on the showroom floor, but these settings can damage a projection TV in no time flat......you can easily burn images onto the CRT's with these settings.

Anyway, hope my rambling helped you out a bit.....the one thing I love about a widescreen, is that they just look so damn cool compared to regualar tv's......I really don't even like watching 4:3 tv's anymore.....they just seem too cramped up to me

Good Luck!