Daniel there are still two big boxes of Mac stuff that will be heading your way sometime this week. As I'm packing I keep finding one more thing to toss in the boxes.

Sounds good. And fun!

Is there any way to make the font bigger in iTunes? I was kind of using it in my car this weekend, and a larger type for the current song playing would make glancing over to see what's playing much less accident-prone-ish.

Okay, so my brother and SiL gave me the iPod mini for Christmas, pre-loaded with a bunch of music. From what y'all say upthread, I can sync the iPod manually with the music on my hard drive? Can I download the music on the iPod to my hard drive so that in the future I can sync automatically?

I'm hardly the expert, but ipodlounge.com has all sorts of useful info. It's my understanding that music is not supposed to travel from iPod to computer, only the other direction, but that there are several workarounds. Go to the site, check FAQs under Help, and the info is there.

I have an aspect ratio question.

When in Best Buy yesterday, the salesperson was trying to sell me on this widescreen TV, telling me that it was perfectly suited for movies, with the whole 16:9 thing. He finally admitted that it would squish normal TV, which was pretty much a no brainer for me -- I'd rather waste screen space on bars than encourage distortions.

But while I was watching the stuff they were testing, it was apparent that the TV was not displaying as well as the HDTV widescreen units -- they had extra info on the sides that the 4:3 sets were chopping off, and in fact, the widescreen flat tube was chopping AND squishing.

Is that because they had it set up badly? What signal were they piping that a standard TV was chopping anyway? Is my TV chopping?

Is my TV chopping?

Yes, but it's supposed to. Like movies, tv is shot with the understanding that a certain amount of the visible-in-the-studio edge of the frame will be cropped out by the projection/tv set. The "tv safe" region of a video frame is the middle 90%. ("Title safe" is the middle 80%, the idea being that titles really have to be seen, so you should be extra-safe and give the TV manufacturer an extra 10% wiggle room.)

Is aspect info sent along with the picture? I mean, how does a standard TV know when to letterbox, and when to chop, or conversely, how does a widescreen TV know when to squish, when to show wide, and when to slice off the letterboxing?

Also, what was UP with the Phillips?

The Phillips just sounds screwy. And you know, I have no idea how a television detects aspect ratio. It must be part of the signal. (Which makes me wonder if it affects the frame rate, the way color does. Huh.)

Yes, but it's supposed to. Like movies, tv is shot with the understanding that a certain amount of the visible-in-the-studio edge of the frame will be cropped out by the projection/tv set.

Huh. I have the Spike Jonze DVD of videos - when I play the one with Christopher Walken on my Mac, there's a scene where I can clearly see the reflection of the camera in a mirror. The camera gets cropped completely when I play it on a TV.

And you know, I have no idea how a television detects aspect ratio. It must be part of the signal.

When I set up my new DVD player, it asked me if I had a wide aspect-ratio TV, so it would know how to handle letter-boxing. (If I had a wide aspect-ratio TV, the black bands above and below the picture in a letter-boxed movie would be moslty gone.)

But, you know, I also have no idea what a TV does with the various aspect ratios....

But, you know, I also have no idea what a TV does with the various aspect ratios....

As near as I can tell, it doesn't. I think that most TVs are pretty dumb when it comes to that sort of thing, and you have to tell it manually what to do.

If you have a 4x3 TV

• HDTV content (16x9) must be received by an HDTV tuner (almost certainly not built into the TV). You will tell the tuner that you have a 4x3 TV, it will letterbox (or maybe pan/scan on the fly) and send the new 4x3 signal to the TV.
• DVD content (1.85:1, 2.33:1, or 4:3) will be letterboxed as necessary by the DVD player, which also must be told you have a standard 4x3 TV
• Normal TV content can be tuned directly by the TV, because it's already 4x3. When you watch a letterboxed signal on, say, TCM or something, then you're actually getting a 4x3 signal. Those black bars are actually contained in the signal, unlike with anamorphic DVDs.

If you have a 16x9 TV

• HDTV content will be tuned by either the TV or an external tuner, and sent to the TV, which will be set to "Full", which means "widescreen content on a widescreen TV, yay!"
• Widescreen DVD content will be letterboxed as necessary (just a tiny bit for 1.85:1 movies, a bit more for cinemascope 2.33:1 ones) by the DVD player, which knows you have a 16:9 TV.
• Normal 4:3 DVD content will be sent directly as 4:3 video, just as if you were talking to a normal 4:3 TV. The user is expected to set the TV to "4:3", which will display the signal in the middle of the screen putting nice gray bars down the side of the widescreen television.
• TV content works exactly like 4:3 content.

Basically, widescreen TVs almost always work perfectly with widescreen movies and HDTV content (only little bars when there are bars at all, and you don't have to play with the TV to make them work, just set the tuner/DVD player once), but make you push buttons to display 4:3 content unsquished (squishing, however, is NEVER required, at least I can't imagine it ever would be. The Best Buy salesman was probably kind of dumb.) 4:3 TVs are the opposite.

In the future, when I have a widescreen TV, I expect it will only annoy me when I want to watch DVDs of old shows. All new shows are being filmed in 16:9 HDTV anyway.

(For those too lazy to read and grok all of the above: I'd recommend buying 16:9 TVs. They're a little more work, sometimes, but they'll never squish anything if you know what buttons to push (though normal TV will have bars down the sides), and in the future, when HDTV content is the way, the truth, and the light, you'll be really happy you have it.)