WHICH WIDE SCREEN HAS SAME VERT. HEIGHT AS MY 36


Hey guys,
Pull out your tape measures!
First off, were measuring screens here, not something else!
LOL.
Seriously, I own a 36" Sony Wega KD-36XS955 4:3 CRT HDTV and the actual screen height, vertically, is 22 1/2 high.
This does not include the chassis, only the actual screen itself.
I like the vertical height of my Sony, but I want a wide screen tv for HD and movies with the 16:9 aspect ratio. I want the actual screen height at least the same vertical height as my 36 incher.
My question is this:
On wide screen tv's, what MINIMUM size would I need to buy to AT LEAST EQUAL the 22 1/2 vertical height of my 36" 4:3 screen Sony CRT?
Remember, this is the actual screen itself, and does NOT include the chassis.
One friend said a 46", another friend said a 50" wide screen, but I need more solid answers from actual owners of wide screens. Neither of my friends actually owns one!
Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
audio_girl

Showing 1 response by jameswei

I respectively recommend that you recheck your vertical height measurement. If the 36 inch Wega has a standard 4:3 aspect ratio, the vertical height would be 21.6 inches. This would be commensurate with a 44 inch (not 46 inch) HDTV. This may be a moot point since screen sizes seem to jump from 42 inches to 50 inches with no choices in between.

Another thought is that most movies are shot in a wider aspect ratio than HDTV's 16:9. Many are shot at 2.35:1. When I watch a movie in widescreen format on my HDTV, I have black "bars" across the top and bottom of my screen; the TV displays the full width of the picture and wastes some of my vertical screen availability. Accordingly, when I bought my HDTV, I was replacing a 35 inch standard tube TV, and I wanted to preserve my vertical image size for movies. As a result, I wound up buying a 55 inch HDTV.

Without going into a lot of math, the conversion for this is 1.62 times the diagonal of the standard screen. For your 36 inch standard screen, you would get a 58 inch HDTV. The industry makes 55 inch and 60 inch HDTVs, so you would have a choice.