Standard-Definition TV Is Getting Hard To Watch

Similar deal here, We've got digtal TV, but the missing edges are VERY frustrating.

Just wait for the upcoming Commonwealth and Olympic games. We'll only see the middle 5 tracks/lanes in the sprints and swimming.

Motor racing is also putting the position updates and such "in the margin" where we cannot even see them.

Just like computer programmers choking extra bandwidth by adding features, the programmers are creating a situation where eventually we will "retire" those older sets even thought they are till functional. Yet another example of consumerism increasing the waste our society generates in the name of progress.

Same complaint, and some more detail. I've been watching the Grand Prix for 30 years and the last 2 years have been hell on the regular 4:3 set. The channels have taken to reducing the font size on all the racing times and other data that is shown on screen and now it it illegible due to the tiny font size in comparison to the TV's native pixel/blur size.

On a big-wide screen the driver's initials and numbers work, but on an old "big" 4:3 TV the race data is now illegible (that's whether I use letter-box or normal 4:3, Analog or Digital.)

Call it conjecture, but I also noticed during the same time in which the fonts shrank and the margins started to carry critical data, that the sports shows were heavily sponsored by manufacturers of big-wide TVs, often having 2 or more big-wides in shot on stage and giving them away as prizes.

Did the TV manufacturers put it to the TV content providers to slowly reduce the data fonts so that they are legible only on big-wide TVs? We won't be told if they did, but regardless it's a shame that the content providers care so little about their faithful audience and so much about their pay-masters, or that they simply have all bought big-wides themselves and couldn't care less that the lower half of the socio-economic population can't afford the big-wide ego-trip.

An "also" is that the football and the tennis now use a lot more wide-shots, and as a result the ball is often almost invisible on an old "big" (26") 4:3 TV.

(No) thanks for your casual indifference to the interests of the lesser-wealthy viewers, TV sports content providers.

Disdain,

Aging and rather hurt sports watcher.

You have a computer, watch the Grand Prix on that, the coverage from the BBC is second to none & you miss nothing by adds popping up. Has anyone noticed how the commercial companies can make a ½hour programme last an hour with so many ads, I wish someone could come up with a recorder that takes out the ads I'd buy one although not if it's anything to do with SKY. There are a lot of really good series's being made but are totally unwatchable for all the breaks, if it's one that I want to watch I wait a year or so for the DVD set to be marked down to 25% then buy it.

My one and only tv is a Samsung combo computer monitor/tv with a ADSL tuner in it. Although it will display HDSL from an external input, I'm not interested enough in upgrading to the digital programming. I get a great cable analog signal and watch it in 9x6 (I think it's 9x6?) mode, though some of the programming comes in with the black bands top and bottom.

I get a more than adequate picture and love it, even if it's only a 19" monitor. And I'll stick with it for as long as Sy-Fi, History, Discovery, Travel and Fox News channels are offered on analog.

Hooker

...my complaint is that all the local HD stations are delivered as "converted" analog TV to my HDTV receiver by DirecTV even though they are transmitted in HD!

...in other words, I actually get BETTER pictures using an old-fashioned rabbit-ear-TV antenna with my HDTV for the local HD stations than I can via satellite-digital!

...samething with our local HD educational Public Broadcasting channel.