Televisions Buying Guide

Don't be mystified by jargon or fooled by hype. Our comprehensive Buying Guides help you choose the right products.

What you need to know, from the kind of user you are to current technologies:

WIDE-SCREEN VERSUS 4:3

Television screens today come in two shapes. The older format is called 4:3, which represents four centimetres of width for every three centimetres of height. More and more are available in wide-screen, or 16:9, which take the same shape as many movies. Wide-screen sets cost more per square centimetre of screen than standard TVs. However, as most television programmes are made in widescreen and the format is much closer to the actual field of vision of the human eye, if you have £500 or more budgeted towards your next television, you should seriously consider going wide. With huge numbers of anamorphic (enhanced for wide-screen) DVDs and the appearance of more wide-screen TV programmes, there's plenty of wide-screen content out there and even more will appear in the future.

Black bars and unused screen | Wide-screen TVs and 4:3 programmes

Black bars and unused screen

Many people choosing between 16:9 and 4:3 TVs wonder how much picture they'll be missing when viewing differently shaped programmes. DVD and other wide-screen video shown on a standard TV have black bars, known as 'letterbox' bars, above and below the wide-screen image. Conversely, normal programmes shown on a wide-screen TV have 'windowbox' bars on either side of the picture. They can be annoying, but are a short-term disadvantage during the transition to widescreen broadcasting.

Wide-screen TVs and 4:3 programmes

All wide-screen TVs have ways to stretch, crop or zoom the regular 4:3 image so that it fills the screen. These methods distort the image somewhat, but many wide-screen TV owners prefer looking at slightly stretched people rather than windowbox bars. Here's a quick rundown of the different names for selectable aspect-ratio modes found on 16:9 sets.

Normal or 4:3: Places windowbox bars on either side of the 4:3 screen.

Zoom or Enlarge: Magnifies the entire image, eliminating the windowbox bars but cropping the top and bottom of the image. Often, more than one level of zoom is provided.

Wide or Full: Used for native 16:9 content such as that found on DVDs. With 4:3 content, such as normal TV, it stretches the image horizontally, making people look shorter and fatter.

Panorama, TheaterWide, or Natural: TV makers have many names for modes that compromise between stretching and zooming to fill the screen. Some stretch the sides of the image more than the middle, so people in the centre of the screen look correct. Some crop a little so they don't have to stretch as much.