Liqourice

Reading in the manual to my new LED TV it says don't keep the TV to much in 4:3 mode because the black borders will damage the display.

How much of a risk is this? I just don't like watching 4:3 stretched out to 16:9. It's ugly...

Judas

this is for the most part... due to the fact that the LCD's themselves are permanently black for long periods of time which isn't exactly healthy for them.

Provided you switch often enough among 16:9 and 4:3.... shouldn't hurt it to much..

As for the stretching.... i've found that samsungs stretching agorithm is a little bit better then what most all tvs had been in the past.. because they try to retain uniphormity and only ramping up the stretching on the outsides.. so while people look a little fatter.. it's not as bad as it was before.

yes takes some getting used to no doubt... But even for as backwards and prehistoric some of our cable/satalite tech here is.... or tv over IP... all of them except for analog cable... provides a 16:9 ratio widescreen aspect in the sat/cable/ip box's own options that allows you to better adjust for this.

Not sure about your situation though..

Stick to highdef channels if you can.. or channels that provide a proper 16:9 ratio while maintaining 4:3

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Liqourice

Well, the channels are as they are. No channels do it like that I'm afraid. It's either stretched out or black borders.

I don't know how this would have worked had I gotten an external decoder box from the cable company. I chose to get a CA module for the TV instead, there's enough boxes already.

Some shows are ok to watch stretched out, others are not. Though, if it is that bad I wouldn't imagine why they ship the tv's with the option of 4:3 at all.