Hi--

>I guess I don't understand why the lines or pixel size matters. My Video
>Camera Sony DSR-PD100A display has a width/height ratio of 1.5 and it's
>clearly more rectangular that my computer or TV which has a ration of 1.33.
>If I map every infinitessimal portion of the DV image onto the TV, the image
>will become narrower and thus stretch vertically. A perfect circle on my DV
>LCD screen will become elongated vertically when I dub the DV tape to VHS
>tape.
>
>I'm taping a high school student playing cello. He is taller and thinner on
>the VHS tape than on the Sony DV image.
>
>There's no way mathematically to 'map' an 1.5 image to a 1.33 image without
>distorting the image.
>
>Now maybe what's happening (that will reconcile what you are saying with
>what's happening) is that what I am seeing on the Sony video camera is
>actually distorted and the final result on the TV is true. Is it possible
>that the Sony video LCD has square pixels and thus the image on it is the
>one that's distorted and the VHS/TV image is true?
>
>Which way are the DV pixels rectangular--wider than tall or taller than
>wide??

A-HA! You have both discovered the answer to your own question, and
pointed out something I had not noticed (!!!;-) the DV-camcorder display
has square pixels, and as a result, it displays a sideways-stretched image
at 32 (as does a square-pixel computer editing system...). Look at
the TRV-900 image on TV, though, and without losing inordinate amounts
of image on the two edges, things will look right. Shoot a circle
with the camera, and it will look oval on the LCD camcorder screen and
on most computer monitors, but look at it on TV (or on a VHS copy on
TV...), and the circle will be round. As I said before, the extra
DV horizontal resolution (the vertical resolution is set by the number
of scan lines and cannot be changed in NTSC) is had by increasing the
pixel count within the 640 length - and that can be done by making the
DV pixels smaller horizontally than vertically (rectangular, instead of
square) in order to fit 720 of them in the space of 640 without changing
the 480-high count). BTW, Hi-8 is often grabbed as 704x480 in computers
for the same reason to increase horizontal resolution compared with 640.