Every damn restaurant and sports bar now has wide screen HDTVs. But they are too cheap to spring for actual HDTV signals for them. And they don't want sidebars because everyone knows only French art films should be letterboxed. Thus, everyone now watches their happy hour sports-and-CNN in Stretch-O-Vision.

Can you imagine 1950s or 1960s Americans putting up with this? But today, nobody cares or even notices the problem. This is what's wrong with America. How can we invent the Next Big Thing that will rescue our economy and assure our dominance for another generation, if we can't even solve Stretch-O-Vision?

Thank you ghjm, for putting a name to a pet peeve - the 4:3 signal into a widescreen display. I'm all in favour of HD, but nobody seems to bother getting it.

If the camera normally adds 10 pounds, how much worse is it in stretch-o-vision?

*WARNING: RANT COMMENCING*

Why are having all these widescreen displays foisted on us in the first place? Widescreen takes up more of your living room or desktop (widthwise) for a smaller screen (area wise) - how does that make any sense as a so called advancement? My new 15" laptop has a smaller screen than my old 15" laptop, yet it won't fit in my briefcase, where my old one will.

What is happening in cinema technology with IMAX? Just the opposite - the screen is squarer - about the same width and twice as high. Monitors should be evolving in the same direction. Sure, tall squarish display may not be the optimum ratio for every purpose, but given the constraint in most households is width (not height), why evolve to use more of it? Letter boxing the display may not look as pleasant as a perfect fit, but it looks better top-and-bottom (movie on a 4:3 monitor) than side-side (TV on a widescreen without stretch-o-vision), and besides, most movies are still wider than so called widescreen and have to be letter boxed anyway. Or worse, presented in vertical stretch-o-vision. Or even worse, interpolated crop-o-vision.

Bring back the 4:3 monitor (but make it HD)! And give it software that applies letter boxing as the default, and won't allow the unwashed masses to unwittingly crop or warp the picture God or the Director intended (Warning: are you aware you are about to cut off 10% of the viewing image / Warning: you are about to fill your screen with short fat dwarfs, please confirm this is your intent)

*END OF RANT* (and thank you for listening )