SD Channel problems

[rucknrun]

I have an HR20-100. We were recording Damages on FX on the SD channel. When we went to watch the shows they were all zoomed in. It is wierd. My AMC channel is like this. I am sorry if there is another thread about this. Does anyone have any ideas why my channels are like this?

[lwilli201]

You many have the format set to crop or stretch. Use the format button on the remote and cycle thru the formats to piller box. See if that clears it up.

[rucknrun]

Duh. Never noticed that button. It is a shame I deleted the programs. I will try that next time. For some reason I think it was set to crop. That is why most people had no heads.

Anyone have any idea why some channels are set differently? Or is it just my set up.

[lwilli201]

How does FX SD look like when you are watching it live?

[gully_foyle]

Duh. Never noticed that button. It is a shame I deleted the programs. I will try that next time. For some reason I think it was set to crop. That is why most people had no heads.

Anyone have any idea why some channels are set differently? Or is it just my set up.SD stations all send the same way: a 4x3 presentation at 480i. If the source material is widescreen (anything wider than 4x3), they letterbox (put black bars at the top and bottom) to preserve the aspect ratio.

It gets more interesting when you view this 4x3 image on a 16x9 HD set. There are several things you can do:

You can stretch sideways to fill the screen. This changes 4x3 to 16x9 and distorts everything (fat people).

You can crop, which blows up the picture so that the screen is filled, but cuts off the top and bottom. This keeps the aspect ratio the same (circles are circles), but results in headless people.

You can pillarbox, adding black or grey bars to the side so that you have the complete 4x3 image in the center of the screeen. Most (but not all) people who've had HD for a while prefer this mode. This preserves the aspect ratio, and all the image, but does not use the sides of the screen.

It gets EVEN MORE complicated when the source was 16x9, and that was letterboxed into 4x3, and THAT is shown on a 16x9 screen. If you pillarbox that, you have what is called "windowboxing" where a 16x9 image appears on the 16x9 screen, surrounded on all four sides by black. Such as "Damages" Peole tend to either watch it that way or use the HR20 crop mode, or their TV's zoom function to get rid of the windowbox.

ANd of course it gets STILL MORE complciated if this SD image is presented on a normally-HD channel, since both the HR20 and some older TVs have limited ability to reformat HD. Stations are supposed to present this pillarboxed (see any of several threads regarding the hated "stretch-o-vision") but a few do not. And still fewer do really odd things (TNT, Cartoon Network).

Hope this helps.