Philips television does anamorphic squeeze?"

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Just went to sears today to look at televisions AGAIN due to my disappointment with my Toshiba 36A60. For some reason JVC's D series and the Toshibas exhibit these strange darker horizontal lines on reds, oranges, and grays during lower contrast to higher brightness ratio scenes.
I did not see these strange horizontal lines on the standard series by JVC just on the D series, which had a vertical band on each side of the television that had these horizontal lines. Very distracting and distorting. The Toshiba had these lines but everywhere on the picture, not limited to the side vertical bands, as with the D series JVC televisions. I can only think these horizontal lines have something to do with tube design or the circuit, since I've seen these on no other televisions of 36" size. Funny, the 32" JVC D series did not exhibit these lines as pronounced as the 36". In fact I seen none on the 32" D series JVC. I can only contribute this anomaly to these sets 36" picture tube design.
Getting past that, I was desperate to find a television that would look good instead of looking distracting and fatiguing.
I was looking at the Philips 36PT41B or the 36PT71B. They offer a feature called "FORMAT". There is 3 settings: 4:3, 4:3 expanded, 16:9 compressed.
The 4:3 setting is a standard picture obviously
The 4:3 expanded will take a letter box movie and stretch it to fit in the 4:3 window. It makes a widescreen movie look as you were watching an anamorphic widescreen movie on DVD, and left the DVD player setting to 16:9 display. The picture is literally stretched up and down and people look very skinny and distorted. I guess this mode is for people who don't like widescreen, but the result is so distorted, I would think most anti-letterbox people would still prefer the letterboxed version.
The 16:9 compressed takes a standard 4:3 picture and compresses it to 16:9. "THIS IS MY MAIN QUESTION."
This 16:9 mode is obviously to watch anamorphic movies and let the television do the conversion instead of the DVD player. Is this technically a anamorphic squeeze where all 480 scan lines will only be used on the 16:9 image and not the horizontal top and bottom black bars? Is this just like what Sony's Wega televisions do, which doesn't waste scan lines on the black bars?
At worst, is this a mode where scan lines are still used on the black horizontal top and bottom bars, but a feature only to make standard 4:3 images look more theater like, but obviously squeezed and distorted?
As Philips is known, it's manual absolutely SUCKS and doesn't explain these Format features to the least in what they are actually meant to do. It just shows a 4:3 being distorted down to a 16:9 image. For the 4:3 expand, it just shows a 4:3 letterboxed picture being stretched and distorted to hide the black bars.
Also, are these sets good? Do they compare to the JVCs and Toshibas, MINUS THE HORIZONTAL LINES, and also to the Sony S Series(It's either this Philips or the Sony 36" S66)?
My Mom and my Dad each have a 27" Philips/Magnavox and have no problems what so ever and the pictures look good.
Unfortunately, there is an extreme lack of Philip television reviews, so I have no place to reference this set's performance, features, and reliability.
Also, Sear's demos, as always suck by not having any sets hooked up correctly and what sets are hooked up, pictures contain tons of interference. If I could find this set any place other than Circuit City and Sears, I would, but Sears seems to be my only unfortunate choice.
Thanks in advance for your replies.

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The Cable Cooker

Topic - Philips television does anamorphic squeeze?" - Brad G. 15:04:13 06/12/01 (1)

CC says the 16:9 compressed is anamorphic squeeze, the real deal - Brad G. 02:10:00 06/13/01 (0)

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