SciFi-HD Viewing Borders

[KenB123]

I checked out (briefly) SciFi-HD and each time the broadcast came over not being in full wide-screen mode. The show that was on appeared to be widescreen format, but it was surrounded by a black frame (all four sides). Is this the way they are broadcasting? Why not broadcast in full widescreen?

I can set my TV to expand the video to fill the screen but then I need to reset it when changing channels. Not something I want to keep doing.

 

[teamlazyboy]

on the content they have in HD it will be full screen 16:9. when they show SD contnet they show it in 4:3 pillar box. I do wish, however tehy would show the SD stuff in OAR so the WS stuff fills the screen

 

[KenB123]

on the content they have in HD it will be full screen 16:9. when they show SD contnet they show it in 4:3 pillar box. I do wish, however tehy would show the SD stuff in OAR so the WS stuff fills the screen

Pillar box is just the two side bars correct? I was referring to what seemed to be a 16:9 show, but it was not taking advantage of the full widescreen TV. It had borders on all 4-sides. A miniaturized widescreen display, so to speak.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

At least when it is letter-boxed 4:3, the partial stretch will actually get the whole picture. But in general, I think it looks like crap.

Sad, that Sci Fi hasn't figured out that they really need to start broadcasting in HD if they are going to call the channel Sci Fi HD.... but I suspect it will come.... eventually.

 

[KAB]

Pillar box is just the two side bars correct? I was referring to what seemed to be a 16:9 show, but it was not taking advantage of the full widescreen TV. It had borders on all 4-sides. A miniaturized widescreen display, so to speak.

What you are seeing is SD 16:9 embedded in a 4:3 frame.

 

[SarKen]

I was sad to see the Dr. Who premier was 16:9 in SD. This is a new show and you would think it would be in HD.

 

[aperry]

I was sad to see the Dr. Who premier was 16:9 in SD. This is a new show and you would think it would be in HD.

Doctor Who is not filmed in HD. It is a conscious choice by them to not do so at this point. That being said, I wish Sci-Fi HD would go ahead and show the widescreen show filling up the entire screen, rather than what they do now... There's really no reason they couldn't take an SD 16:9 show and broadcast it so it takes up the entire screen. In other parts of the world, virtually everything broadcasts in widescreen, even if it is not HD. We even have one or two shows that do that here. Hell's Kitchen on Fox is (I'm pretty sure) broadcast that way.

 

[loves2watch]

Pillar box is just the two side bars correct? I was referring to what seemed to be a 16:9 show, but it was not taking advantage of the full widescreen TV. It had borders on all 4-sides. A miniaturized widescreen display, so to speak.

That is called letterboxed and pillarboxed. They do this for SD programming so you can use the zoom function on your TV to fill the screen (even though it looks poor).

 

[G Schmaltz]

Letter boxing 4:3 content was nice when everyone had square TV's. Now...well, it's mostly unusable.

 

[Pepper]

Just hope and pray they don't figure out how to stretch, ala Food and HGTV.

 

[mike123abc]

It is probably called saving money on production. They can just send the same signal out on both HD and SD at the same time and not worry about it. If they were to really do a service they would take the time to upconvert the SD letterboxed to full screen HD 16:9. But, they would probably have to pay to have all the commercial breaks redone since they would not want to zoom the commercials. Probably not a lot of expense, but a broadcast engineer sitting there all day being alert and pressing the button at the right times.

 

[richiephx]

Sheesh....Use the format button on your remote to eliminate sidebars....are some of you too lazy to take control yourself? I would much rather reformat the SD picture myself then to depend upon the programmer to do it for me.

 

[G Schmaltz]

Sheesh....Use the format button on your remote to eliminate sidebars....are some of you too lazy to take control yourself? I would much rather reformat the SD picture myself then to depend upon the programmer to do it for me.

C'mon now. Why on earth would you call us lazy? I do stretch the shows every so often to keep the guns filled up. Sometimes I don't need to. During Dr. Who, I noticed a Scott's lawn care ad was full 16:9 HD so I left the format button alone for most of that show. I don't really have much of a problem with pillars. Window boxing however is a distraction for me.

 

[wetz73]

Just like if you stick a CD in a DVD player it doesn't make it a DVD, if you stick a SD program on an HD channel it doesn't magically become HD. It has to be SHOT IN HD TO BE HD!!!!!! Also, I believe there are only certain FILM modes that are capable of being upconverted, and unless you have something shot in SD on that film, it will have to remain in unconverted SD. If you don't like black bars, either stretch or zoom with your remote. The reason TBS looks like crap is because people complain that Saved By The Bell, et. al. doesn't fill up the whole screen so they stretch it for you and it looks like garbage. Let me decide if I want it stretched or not! It's one button on the remote!

 

[teamlazyboy]

i think an OAR signal from the provider would be the better solution, whether the signal is HD or SD, if the signal was OAR then an SD show would be better quality anyway since we wouldn't be needlessly stretching and zooming.