Do all widescreen TV's cut off heads or have an annoying border?

[LisaR]

What am I doing wrong? I try to catch up with modern technology and I am disappointed. I assume it is just me.

I bought a 32" HDTV. If we watch it in widescreen mode, it leaves a border around the TV so our 32" tv is not really 32 inches. Our entertainment center can only hold a 37" screen maximum so I can't go a whole lot bigger.

There is a button to adjust the screen size. When I do that so the whole screen has a picture, all the heads are chopped off. It looks like the way my dad used to take pictures on family vacations.

I am ready to hook up my old analog tv and take this one back. What am I missing?

 

[doxdogy]

Is it possible the program you are watching is not in HD? If you have satellite or cable make sure you are on the HD channel.

 

[GRUMPY PIRATE]

Check your instruction book, it sounds like you have your borders turned on for all channels.

on ours, the borders only show up on a non-hd channel. (but we can turn on boarders for them if we want to)

 

[Ciao Mickey]

What am I doing wrong? I try to catch up with modern technology and I am disappointed. I assume it is just me.

I bought a 32" HDTV. If we watch it in widescreen mode, it leaves a border around the TV so our 32" tv is not really 32 inches. Our entertainment center can only hold a 37" screen maximum so I can't go a whole lot bigger.

There is a button to adjust the screen size. When I do that so the whole screen has a picture, all the heads are chopped off. It looks like the way my dad used to take pictures on family vacations.

I am ready to hook up my old analog tv and take this one back. What am I missing?

Check your tv manual. You have to adjust the ratio/size of the picture or whatever it's called.

There is also something on some cable remotes that can be adjusted (we always had to run down and adjust my mil's Cablevision remote that chopped off heads. She kept on hitting the button that adjusted the zoom, normal, wide screen for the tv picture.

 

[LisaR]

I've looked and don't see a way to turn the borders off.

Originally, we had this hooked up to our satellite and we could not get a single station where the heads weren't cut off unless we used the wide screen mode.

We just hooked it up to our antenna (our ultimate goal is to get rid of satellite) and we were able to get a full screen without heads being chopped off!

When we switch channels, it goes back to wide screen mode automatically and we use the remote to change it to full screen. I am sure there is a way to keep it in full screen automatically but I haven't found it yet.

I don't get why we couldn't get full screen with satellite?

 

[RadioNate]

You need to tell your satellite box what type of TV you are using. I know it is an option in the DirectTV set up. You pick what ratio the TV is.

 

[Dan Murphy]

If you are watching low definition channel, or a movie/whatever, that was not made for current flat panel/wide screen TVs' aspect ratio, you have to decide whether you want to watch with the screen filled up, thereby losing some picture (heads cut off), or have the side bars, giving you the whole picture. If you are watching high definition, or a movie/whatever made for wide aspect ratio, you will have full screen and nothing cut off.

 

[tvguy]

You shouldn't be having a problem since TV shows are all now formatted for 16x9. Shows shot in 4x3 are converted to 16x9. Has to be some adjustment on the TV itself.

Old foggies like me should be the only ones having this issue. I still have 4x3 TV's and the top and bottom are cut off because of the 16x9 conversion. If I watch DVD's and select 4x3 or VHS movies, I have no problem. The scores at the top of the screen, and tickers on the bottom are always cut off on my TV. I've upgrade when one of my TV's dies. Too cheap to throw out a TV that still works like new, and I don't have a spare $2,500 laying around for a new LED TV.

 

[bicker]

What am I doing wrong? I try to catch up with modern technology and I am disappointed. I assume it is just me. I bought a 32" HDTV. If we watch it in widescreen mode, it leaves a border around the TV so our 32" tv is not really 32 inches.

A few definitions to start, and then an explanation and recommendations...

"Aspect Ratio" - The relationship between how wide the picture is and how tall it is. Old (standard definition) televisions, and old (standard definition) television programming, were "4:3" (height:width). New (high definition) televisions, and new (high definition) television programming, is "16:9" (again height:width).

"Letterboxed" - This is what happens when the programming has a wider Aspect Ratio than the television screen. The result is black bars above and below the picture. This is generally the result when high definition programming is presented on an standard definition television.

"Pillarboxed" - This is what happens when the programming has a narrower Aspect Ratio than the television screen. The result in black bars to the sides of the picture. This is generally the result when standard definition programming is presented on a high definition television.

"Postage Stamp" - This is a casually-used term, referring to when a presentation is both Letterboxed and Pillarboxed. This generally happens when high definition programming is presented via a standard definition television station, but presented on a high definition television. The television station Letterboxes the programming, and then the television, figuring that it is standard definition programming, Pillarboxes it. Generally, this Postage Stamp situation can be avoided by the viewer. Since the programming is high definition, and the television is high definition, the viewer should watch the programming off of the high definition television channel. (Sometimes that requires an additional fee.)

Letterboxing and Pillarboxing are results of physical realities - round peg in square hole type of things. You can try to overcome these realities with Zooming, but it generally won't work well. If you zoom a Pillarboxed presentation, then you're telling your television to cut-off the top and bottom of the programming. If you zoom a Letterboxed presentation, then you're telling your television to cut-off the right and left portions of the picture.

If you have a Postage Stamp scenario, you may think that Zooming should work perfectly, i.e., nothing should be cut-off, since you have black bars on all four sides. However, the math typically doesn't work out that way. Beyond that, in Zooming the picture, you're going to exacerbate any of the imperfections added into the video in the two previous machinations of the video.

Our entertainment center can only hold a 37" screen maximum so I can't go a whole lot bigger.

We got rid of our entertainment center and just got a low credenza-like console. FWIW.

There is a button to adjust the screen size. When I do that so the whole screen has a picture, all the heads are chopped off.

My recommendation is to not mess with the Aspect Ratio. Leave it set to 16:9, since that's what your television actually is. Switch to high definition channels whenever possible, and live with the Pillarboxing when that isn't possible. A 37 inch diagonal HDTV is as big as an old 30 inch diagonal standard definition television, and that's not too shabby. It's better to watch that way than to have things cut-off, or distorted.

I am ready to hook up my old analog tv and take this one back.

That's not going to help you much. Very soon, everything is going to be Letterboxed on analog televisions.

 

[GRUMPY PIRATE]

I won't bother with giving the OP definitions, as they are usually covered in the manual.

but something else that MAY be the cause of the problem is how you connected the television to the cable box/sat box or other input.

if you didn't use an HDMI cable, that may be the cause of your problem.

I know that on all three of my HDTV's I have a variety of ways of providing input.

for instance, the bluray players are connected by HDMI cables, but one "old" dvd players is through the RGB plugs, and so forth.

the televisions will detect the input signal and adjust appropriately.

that may be the source of your problem.

good luck.

 

[bonoriffic]

It sounds like you aren't paying for, or selecting a high definition channel.

If you have cable, here is a simple test. Connect to the TV direct from the wall. Do not use any cable company provided boxes, switches, or devices. Go to your local ABC / NBC / CBS channel. Not the cable channel. For example in Chicago Fox is Channel 32, but Comcast has set it to channel 12. Go to Channel 32. Now go up one channel. With any luck you are now looking at brilliant HD. If not, manually enter 32-1 or 32.1. (Replace 32 with your local number). The dash or dot will depend on your TV brand, but there will be one of those two. 32-1 is the HD version of channel 32.

If you still see bars and cut off heads while on an HD channel, your TV is set to the wrong mode and should be in full or some other term that does not alter the TV size in any way.

If you don't see 32-1 in HD, which the cable company legally has to provide for no extra charge, you will have to have your TV do a channel scan which is part of setup. It will then find 32-1. Do this without being connected to the box, as the cable box blocks these free HD versions of your local channels.

 

[bicker]

but something else that MAY be the cause of the problem is how you connected the television to the cable box/sat box or other input. if you didn't use an HDMI cable, that may be the cause of your problem.

That's a good point. However, component video cables are also capable of carrying high definition video. Component video cables are three cables, one red, one green and one blue, and are separate from (but look similar to) the red and white cables that are typically used for stereo audio connections.

 

[LisaR]

It looks like the problem is solved. I don't know why we couldn't get an acceptable picture when we were hooked up to satellite. I played with the settings and was never happy on any channel.

We hooked up to an antenna yesterday and after playing around again with the settings, everything seems right. I watched two shows last night on two different stations and both were fine.

I am so happy to be able to get rid of satellite!