Probably a noob question...

[stevenl]

Your issue is strange.
I am using only the HDMI and all HD are correct
The non HD in the HD channell range have the sides
And the rest are full screen, just not as good a picture as the HD

Like i mentioned it depends on the tv.. Some handle it some dont, Also the box.. If you set your box to allow both 480 and 1080 outputs it will also help the issue.

 

[stevenl]

I'm new to the forum and came here exploring this very same question. I just switched from DirecTV to TWC (by force, believe me). I had regular satellite at the old place and decided to upgrade to HD when I got the cable here.

The issue IS the box. I'll tell you why. Your old box was expecting a normal TV so it broadcast a normal 4:3 picture that your TV then stretched to fill the screen. The nice thing about this setup is that your TV probably has a "Full Screen" mode (or something similar) that stretches the sides more than the center so the picture in the middle of the screen looks near perfect and you barely even notice the stretching.

Now you have HD and your box is probably set to 16:9 picture output rather than 4:3. Unfortunately the box adds in the gray side bars for the 4:3 picture rather than just broadcasting it as is. When you try to use the "Full Screen" on your TV the side bars are included in the picture that the TV is trying to adjust...you can't get rid of them. Maybe the box manufacturers feel that the black screen on your TV is too bland and gray side bars will remind you why you pay for HD programming and force you to stop watching 4:3??

The box only has the stretch or zoom options to fix this issue. It doesn't have the "full screen" output which is 1,000X better than the stretch and/or zoom options. This is why your current picture, when stretched, looks horrible.

Believe me - I feel your pain. How does one contact star america with this feedback?

Well sorta you are correct, its not so much just the 4:3 vs 16:9 its also the 1080 vs 480. If your box is set to only send 1080 on your HD outputs then your tv will only be expecting a 16:9 picture, if it doesnt get it the TV adds the lines to it. If you put two inputs to your tv one say componet and one svideo or rca or whatever, when your are in svideo (non-hd mode) your picture will come in full screen automaticly. Then when you switch to the hd componet input youll notice the bars. It depends on your tv, and the box type and how they interact. Using two inputs is one way to fix this problem another way would be to if your box lets you setup two output types on your box to use both 480 and 1080 that way when you are in a STD channel it can use the 480 output and it will be able to "fullscreen" the image...

Hope that helps

 

[Hokie01]

Well sorta you are correct, its not so much just the 4:3 vs 16:9 its also the 1080 vs 480. If your box is set to only send 1080 on your HD outputs then your tv will only be expecting a 16:9 picture, if it doesnt get it the TV adds the lines to it. If you put two inputs to your tv one say componet and one svideo or rca or whatever, when your are in svideo (non-hd mode) your picture will come in full screen automaticly. Then when you switch to the hd componet input youll notice the bars. It depends on your tv, and the box type and how they interact. Using two inputs is one way to fix this problem another way would be to if your box lets you setup two output types on your box to use both 480 and 1080 that way when you are in a STD channel it can use the 480 output and it will be able to "fullscreen" the image...

Hope that helps

So we're beating the horse...and getting closer to the answer. The box (SA 8300HD) allows you to select multiple output formats (1080i, 720p, 480p, 480i) but only 1 aspect ratio (either 16:9 or 4:3) output. So if it's sending 480p to the tv it's adding the sidebars to make it a 16:9 picture (unless you tell the box to stretch it, then it takes out the sidebars and sends poorly stretched 16:9 full screen image). I wonder if you connect s-video as well if it would send a true 4:3 image through the s video on the 480p channels...more to follow on this issue when i check it out. don't have time to play with it tonight.