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.)

I'm gonna buy a new TV soon. I'm gonna get a 16:9 HDTV, but pro'lly with a picture tube, as I don't wanna pay the prices for a big enough plasma or LCD screen.

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

This was not the case with my in-laws widescreen HDTV. It displayed 4:3 and 16:9 television just fine, as well as DVDs, with no additional buttons to press.

The only real problem with the TV is that RotK looked so sharp that a lot of the theatrically beautiful composite work became painfully visible.

Those black bars are actually contained in the signal, unlike with anamorphic DVDs.

See, the Best Buy guy (I know, I know) tried to assure me that it would crop vertically, so 4:3 broadcast 16:9 would look better. But who knows? That TV was squishing the hell out of the picture, and in the end, for a 26" diagonal, you end up with very little vertical screen height.

I just bought a new TV, 27". I thought about HDTV, but figured to not spend the cash now, since I turn TVs over every three years or so. It'll be good.

I have a program that moves songs from iPod to iTunes, but I don't remember what it's called now. If you want I'll check tomorrow.

Is there a (possible for the home amateur) way to record the sound from a DVD without the track that would go to the center-channel speaker? I need a soundtrack of WWII background, and I wanted to use the opening 20ish minutes of Saving Private Ryan, but I don't want it to be immediately identifiable, or to pull attention, so I'd like to remove the dialogue, etc. I can get this while listening by disconnecting my center speaker, but I'm wondering if there's a way to somehow filter out that track while recording.

Help?

There are rumors that Apple is going to release a Monitorless, sub-$500 Mac.

OK, there have been rumors to that effect for years, but they're suddenly more concrete.

I have a really dumb question: I have an iChat account. Can I use iChat to talk to someone on AIM? If so, is there something in the iChat menu that can help me do this?

Any Filemaker Pro users about?

I have a calculated field which produces a number. I have the layout formatted so that the field is showing as a dollar amount with a dollar sign and 2 zeros. I now need to use this figure in another field (which I will send as an email. Within the field, I cannot get the formatting to have a dollar sign or zeros. If the amount ends in 50 cents, it shows as .5, not .50. Does anyone have any ideas?