Brandon_H

Anyone play games "stretched?"

I'm curious as to whether anyone out there with a widescreen TV plays their games "stretched." Or it is a shameful thing to play a game in anything less than its OAR?

I ask because, well, I have to admit that I do. Let me explain . . a couple of months ago, I upgraded to a Sony Cineza VPL-HS10 projector. Native widescreen. Before I got it, I would have sworn that I never would play a game stretched. Sinful, I thought.

But then I popped in a few games. . . and I had a REALLY hard time discerning whether it was 4:3 or 16:9. Like "Phantasy Star Online," for instance. I really couldn't tell. Since it was for Xbox, and my Xbox is set for WS (and most games go by the dashboard setting and won't let you change aspect ratio in-game,) I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. I played widescreen. It looked good. But come to find out, PSO isn't widescreen after all. So the next time I played, I switched to 4:3 on the projector. To my eyes, PSO looked WORSE. And so, I gulped my pride down and re-stretched the ratio.

Since, I've found that I can't really tell the difference in a lot of games. "Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven," for one. So, I'm thinking I might be doing a lot more games in widescreen. Please don't tell anyone. I think they might throw you off the forum for habits like mine. . .

Aaron Copeland

Heh...we've actually discussed this before and the thread got a bit heated.

You don\'t remember because back then it was only a prophecy, but now, in the future, the past has occurred. - A.T.H.F.

Jeff Peake

I have a Pioneer 643 widescreen set. I watch all 4:3 material in "Natural Wide" mode, which stretches the sides more than the middle and zooms in slightly. It is hard to tell that the picture is stretched at all.

Dan Keliikoa

The only genre of games that I can't handle in 'stretch-o-vision' is racing. Cars just DO NOT look good stretched.

But I find that most non-widescreen supported games actually look fine stretched otherwise.

Jason Seaver

I've actually done it the other way more often - if there's a baseball game or something on that I want to watch but not necessarily give my full attention, I'll use the set's "side-by-side" feature and play a game "squished" in the other window.

Jay's Movie Blog - A movie-viewing diary.
Transplanted Life: Sci-fi soap opera about a man placed in a new body, updated two or three times a week.
Trading Post Inn - Another gender-bending soap, with different collaborators writing different points of view.


"What? Since when was this an energy ball movie?" - Overheard during a screening of Takashi Miike's Dead Or Alive
"What the hell religion are you people?" - Overheard during the Captain Marvel serial at SF/29
"If I feel even one bullet hit me, I will rip your lungs out through your nostrils!" - Ron Silver as himself, "Heat Vision And Jack"

Ricky Hustle

Tony-B

Why do you say that?

DVD Collection/Video Game Collection/Music Collection
"The Weighted Companion Cube will never threaten to stab you." -GLaDOS

Jeffrey Forner

Absolutely not. Widescreen TVs have a 4:3 mode for a reason. If you don't like the grey bars (and you shouldn't) you can always cover them up with some easily constructed home made mattes to cover them.

I highly doubt anyone here would stretch a 4:3 DVD to fit a 16:9 set. Why should videogames be treated with less respect among gamers no less? Because it doesn't look "bad" to you? The fact of the matter is, the image is still stretched and distorted.

-J.Fo

Graeme Clark

We're not going to go through this again are we?

The DVDs | The Games

JamesH

I never can understand why people get upset sometimes about the way other people they don't even know play their video games.

Should I ask for permission since I like to keep my contrast and saturation cranked higher than what a ISF calibrated TV would have?