This blog update is not, strictly speaking, related to photography, but it's about something that have noticed a lot and I just had to write about it!

It's all about modern TVs and folks not knowing how to use them properly. The number of times I have walked into someone's home (friends and family) and they have a nice new HD-ready wide screen TV, and the picture they're viewing is all wrong.

It's all about viewing aspect ratios. Analogue TV is broadcast in 4:3 aspect ratio, so the picture is four parts wide to three parts high. If you are using a wide screen TV, which is 16:9, or 4:2.25, to watch analogue broadcasts, there is a fair degree of chance that you will end up with a squashed and stretched image where the TV has pulled the sides to fill the entire screen area. Not only that, the sides are often more distorted than the centre.

Even if you have a digital set top box, the same problem can happen if you don't configure the display settings properly. At least with digital, once the settings have been sorted, the TV will switch between wide screen and 4:3, when required, automatically.

Yes, 4:3 will mean you will have a smaller picture, with black borders on either side, but at least it won't be horribly distorted. If you do get that distorted picture and you aren't using a digital feed, your TV should have a button on the remote control that lets you switch aspect ratios until the most appropriate one is found.

But what really gets me is that there must be hundreds of thousands of people out there, millions, even - who have spent a small fortune on a shiny new wide screen TV and yet they are happy to watch programmes that are horribly distorted... ! :eek: