Maks

Hello, I've read your links, but still have questions...

I just got my first HD Plasma and hooked it up to my SD cable service and you know the rest... my wife wants it out of the house because of the ugly grey bars. We watch alot of 4:3 programming which will not be available in HD.

I agree- the grey bars are ugly, and we both refuse to stretch the 4:3 image into 16:9 - that's even worse, visually. The very best image is 4:3, by far and the built-in Zoom features cut off too much on the top and bottom, plus the huge resolution drop is a deal-killer for us.

I thought the distracting Grey Color (the TV set is Black) )was inserted by the Cable company because when I demo-ed a whole showroom of TV's fed by my same local cable service, they ALL displayed the same Grey bars in 4:3 mode. That was my assumption, until I read your docs which say grey bars are inserted by the manufacturers. I did recall seeing a different showroom without grey bars-- their in-house feed was from Satellite.

Bottom Line- If I am willing to risk burn-in, what can I add between the cable box and Plasma to see 4:3 with hopefully Black bars in 16:9 mode? Or, have you ever heard of customers "tweaking" their sets to darken the grey bars to black in 4:3 mode?

Our eyes are aging and if these manufacturers would simply let the 4:3 image vary it's position from far left to far right like a slow-moving screen-saver, I think the burn-in issue would be resolved.

Without a solution, I'm probably going back to a CRT-- the largest I can find.

Thanks for your time!
Maks