Just say no to stretch-o-vision

This issue never stops bothering us, and every time a new HD channel is launched and they decide to try and alter their non HD content to make it look more like HD; it makes us sick -- literally. While local stations have been doing this for years, the original national so called HD channel to do it was ESPN HD. After years of complaints and ridicule from their peers, they finally wised up and added side bars. Unfortunately, other networks can't learn from their mistake and now we have a whole slew of channels bringing us hours of stretch-o-vision everyday . The reason to not stretch is very simple; every TV and HD STB made today has it's own stretch/zoom modes, so if your viewers want to watch 4:3 content in it's altered state, they can. But when you stretch on your end, there's no way for anyone to unstretch it -- especially when a network uses advanced non-liner stretches with a taste of zoom. To make things worse, many times they mark this content as HD in the guide, almost as if they think that just because they upconvert/crop/stretch SD, that makes it HD -- hey guys you're not fooling anyone. Here's the list of offenders, click thorough to the read links for details.

1. TNT HD

2. TBS HD

3. A&E HD

4. History Channel HD

5. Discovery Channel HD

6. The Learning Channel HD

7. Animal Planet HD

8. Science Channel HD

[Via DBSTalk]