ain't technology grand?

this weekend i bought me a new TV. it's been in my budget for a while now and on saturday afternoon, i bit and bought a nice little 46" sony LCD. now i'm in the midst of trying to figure it out.

upgraded my cable service and swapped my cable box for an HD cable box (there was a difference) and i can say that the channels that are in HD, look pretty good. but i've discovered that it really depends on what is airing at any given moment in time varies in what i see. with the HD channels, i get a full 16:9 picture. some commercials are in 4:3 ratio (standard non-widescreen tv) so i'll see the black bars on the left/right sides. then some commercials (watchmen trailer just aired and did this) and it is widescreen, but scaled to fit within the 4:3 ratio, not my full 16:9.

now, my new cable box will switch between various settings depending on the channel (480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i) but my tv doesn't seem to understand when to use what scaling. typically, both 720p & 1080i (tv supports 1080p, so i'm good there) will display in widescreen. but if i goto a SD (480i/480p) channel, the tv will stretch the 4:3 screen to 16:9. so, with a few quick flips of a button on the TV remote, i can put it back into 4:3, but i haven't figured out yet how to tell the TV to use the proper aspect ratio depending on the channel.

ooo...lobotomies