Originally posted by: petrob

Originally posted by: lazysean
my television, while not a widescreen set, can do anamorphic squeeze.

lasysean,

A little off topic here, but what brand of television set do you have? Sony or JVC? I'm looking at a 27" set with the "widescreen" compression option and only Sony or JVC have that. From the reviews available on the Internet, JVC is cheaper and better quality since Sony builds its TV's in Mexico. If you get a chance, let me know!

petrob

Mine's a Sony. I have to say, though, I'm torn on what to recommend. I'm very happy with my current Sony (36" flatscreen Wega), but the 27" I had before had all kinds of problems. Now, this set was from about 1997 or so, and I have no idea if they've changed their ways at all, but back then Sony had a reputation for lousy quality control on their lower end stuff. The bigger screens, the XBRs, the flatscreens etc were all fine, but the 27s and smaller all had the same arc-shaped picture distortion along the left side of the screen, poor solder joints that would cause anything from random flickering to dead input jacks to just plain not turning on, and who knows what other problems. And their service pretty much blows, but that's not really specific to Sony.

If your research says that kind of junk is still going on, I would definitely go with the JVC. IMHO the Trinitron picture is the best and most accurate picture around, but the tradeoff in reliability just isn't worth it.