Can someone explain to me why folks with wide-screen TVs seem to enjoy watching stuff wide-screen that’s not actually broadcast in widescreen? I.e., stuff that looks over-wide and fat (and, essentially, distorted)? Is it that changing the aspect ratio on their TV is too difficult, or is it that, having a wide-screen TV, they like the “feel” over the oversized picture, even at the expense of fidelity to the actual aspect ratio?
(Katherine does this on her little portable DVD player. Drives me nuts. But I’ve seen it with adults, too, hence the question.)
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Ew. No, I can’t explain that.
I’m bothered by the fact that some TV commercials seem to automatically default to that, while others appropriately maintain the 4:3 aspect ratio.
My remote has an aspect ratio button with four settings. I usually keep it on Full, but sometimes have to set it to 4:3. I may use Zoom for widescreen shows on channels that don’t broadcast in HD, so that I don’t have borders on all four sides of the picture. I’ve never found anything that looks right with the Just setting (which seems to be your culprit).
So it’s a maximum of three presses of a button to select the correct setting. That’s certainly much better than watching a TV show that looks as if its cast is all Jinxians.
My guess would be that fishing around in the menus (or finding the button in the button-forest on the remote) is too difficult so they just got used to it.
The computer-support-guy counterpart is we just introduced a bunch of huge (wide) monitors in our offices. They’re nice but I get a lot of calls from people who have set the resolution to 1024×768 and then complain that everything looks “squished” among other things. Even after setting their resolution for them (some several times) many have requested their old monitors back which we are disinclined to do because the monitor really goes to their position, not to them.
Ah. Well, I’m one of those guys who immediately starts exploring all the menu settings, learning what will improve my experience.
I’m the same way with MMOs. It’s quite amusing to find that somebody I’ve been playing with for six months doesn’t know you can turn on map icons, or see tooltips for things in the mini-map, or type in a number of items to craft so you don’t have to click the arrow to increment the amount 87 times. 🙂
Yeah, I tend to learn a program by immediately going to the Options / Preferences / Configuration page and seeing what I can break …
I routinely introduce people to the Window key with “It’s been six inches from your belt buckle for over a decade now”. I do it with a smile but honestly the lack of curiosity just amazes me sometimes.
Usually it’s when I see them breaking their workflow by using the mouse to minimize 15 windows to get to the desktop, something they do five or ten times a day. I show them “Window + D”
Whereas I always make sure “Show Desktop” is first in my QuickLaunch bar. But I’m not much of a keyboard shortcut guy. 🙂