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Jeff, your VX and PDs when set to their 16:9 mode don't distort. Whatever gave you that idea? OK, they lose vertical resolution and the viewfinders give a smaller image, but that's the only two downers.
As you've found out, folk that can afford your wedding filming skills don't come home from their expensive honeymoon and switch on an old 4:3 CRT, now do they? What they do is stretch, expand, 'smart', 15:9 and god knows what else to your footage, and yes - that sure does distort it.
Very few of them (I'll wager) will bother to switch their nice plasmas to the 4:3 mode, and anyway, as I've found out some 16:9 TVs don't even have a 4:3 mode these days.
So your 4:3 footage is being stretched and pulled to fill these screens. Surely it's better to film in their 16:9 mode and stop the client messing about and getting it wrong?
I used to film with my PAL VX2k in the 16:9 mode and it looked just as good on a 16:9 TV as shooting in 4:3 and have the TV expand the footage to show the central 432 lines. IN NTSC land this cropping will mean a greater resolution hit, but surely it's time to give it a test run.
One thing though. Your clients will make assumptions unless you tell them otherwise. They'll assume the film will be supplied on DVD. They'll assume it will be in colour, sharp and well exposed. They'll also assume it'll fill their posh new TV screen, and I'm not sure how much longer you can continue keeping stum about this last point.
tom.
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