Video Asylum

Posted by Dave Duvall (i) on December 20, 2000 at 09:44:03:

My Sony TV is about eight years old. Appreciate if anyone knows and can advise.

From SoundStage! Home Theater Forum:

>>You know, some Sony sets have a "hidden" vertical squeeze mode that allows you to squeeze all the vertical scan lines down into 16:9 widescreen images so you'd set the DVD player to 16:9 mode on it's menu and set the Sony to vertical squeeze mode for widescreen DVDs and you'd get 20% to 30% better vertical resolution... but only IF your set is one of those with the hidden squeeze mode.

I'm not certain how you would find out... but you might try one of the home theater news groups and see if someone comes back with an answer for your particular model. Usually you have to select an unlikely combination of key presses on the remote or enter the service menu mode (another unlikely combination of key presses on the remote) and use the service menu to access the vertical squeeze mode. Whether you have this or not depends on the model you have and how old it is. Using all the vertical scan lines for widescreen movies is one of the easiest ways to improve image quality on existing sets (the few that have the capability anyway). This vertical squeeze thing is so impressive that in the last 2 years or so, some sets have it as a user selectable mode and selling feature. Next set I get will definitely have this ability.<<

See Ya. Dave