why am i getting 4.3 ratio?

[HEE HAW]

hey all! noobie here and first post on this board.

SET UP:

dtv into hd20/700 box into rca 4 in/1out signal splitter
[component p b y conects] to a samsung 47 inch HD wide/flatscreen.

about 5 or 6 days ago, my box shuts off. i get it back on and it seems like i am getting lots of 4.3 format.

my flatscreen and my dtv box are all set on 16.9 stretch and now everytime a commercial comes on its 4.3. if i watch nfl newtwork or fox/cnn news the main show with the anchor desk in full shot, its 16.9 widescreen. when they go to a reporter or over to the weather girl it goes to 4.3 with black bars on the sides and the network info in them. sometimes on certain comercials it is a small letterbox format in the middle of the screen.

i had NO trouble with this before that night the box went off. comercials, hd stations, pretty much everything was in 16.9 wide. and i keep it all on stretch modes.

now, the box has developed a few probs over the last couple months. when i record something on the dvr, on playback the sound will cut off and on and off and on all the way through a show or for most parts of it. i have been getting lots of glitches in the recorded material, long blinking strands of data, wierd distorted stuff in black sections of a picture like a night scene, behind and around the subject on the screen, you can see swirly looking artifacts in the black.

1 out of 3 recorded shows on the dvr are not viewable due to sound cutting out and glitches and artifacts in the picture.

my local channels are broadcast in HD but all i get now from fox, abc, nbc and abc is 4.3 format!

any ideas whats up?

thanx all!! site looks great with lots of info from some
real knowledgable folks!


HH

[jdspencer]

You'll have to experiment with the various combinations of format settings on the DVR and the TV.

and are you sure that you aren't tuning to the SD version of the channel?

As for the audio problem, how do you have that connected?

I assume that you have rebooted the unit?

[spartanstew]

when they go to a reporter or over to the weather girl it goes to 4.3 with black bars on the sides and the network info in them.

When HD channels show SD content (i.e. News show going to a live spot, ESPN showing SD footage), they often put up the black bars to frame the 4:3 content and add their own logo in the bars. Perfectly normal.

[jdspencer]

This is true, but doesn't answer why 16:9 content is shown within a letterbox (black bars all around). Yeah, I know that 16:9 is shown with black bars top/bottom within a 4:3 display. Thus the boxes all around on a 16:9 display.

[LarryFlowers]

Many shows are shown this way... see Enterprise on the scifi channel

This is true, but doesn't answer why 16:9 content is shown within a letterbox (black bars all around). Yeah, I know that 16:9 is shown with black bars top/bottom within a 4:3 display. Thus the boxes all around on a 16:9 display.

[evan_s]

This is true, but doesn't answer why 16:9 content is shown within a letterbox (black bars all around). Yeah, I know that 16:9 is shown with black bars top/bottom within a 4:3 display. Thus the boxes all around on a 16:9 display.

Often times that is the result of them doing a bad job of taking sd content to a hd channel. You take Widescreen SD content and add bars to the side and you get HD content that does this. Obviously the better option would be to crop the black bars in the original widescreen SD content and scale the remaining part up to fill the HD area.

[HEE HAW]

again, with a hd widescreen set up, i am now getting about 95% 4.3 format when it was just the oposite a couple weeks back.

like i said, box went off. had the remotes in my lap and i thought i may have leaned on the button, but i am not sure. all i know is that the prgram i was watching after i got the box back on was in 4.3 and it was in widescreen 16.9 before it went out.

as i flipped the channels, i saw LOTS of 4.3. all of my local channells like abc, cbs and nbc and fox are ALL 4.3.

and NO, i dont have the sd channel on. i changed them out and the sd channels are hidden. my big 4 local stations are in hd, but instead of having widescreen 16.9 98% of the time, its now 4.3 98% of the time.

it is now making my widescreen irrelevant!

something HAD to have happened. my tv, dtv/dvr is digital, but could there have been an issue when all digital switch took place?

its just very, very frustrating to be watching 4.3 on my 16.9 tv.

bummin' hard!!!!!! :confused: :mad:

[jdspencer]

Many shows are shown this way... see Enterprise on the scifi channelAlso true. Why doesn't SiFi show it full 16:9? Because then those with 4:3 displays would lose content on the left and right. Until 4:3 displays are banned to the junk heap, we'll have to put up with these problems.:D

[netconcepts]

My set-up.. H20-100, Toshiba 32HF72 4X3 Digital Monitor, native off, 1080i fixed output on H20.

On Channel 101 (hd) and all the sports channels will in 5 seconds switch from letterbox to zoom 4.3, pressing the format button has no effect. When you change the channel, the screen reverts back to letterbox and then changes the channel. Reboots, resets have no effect.

[texasbrit]

My set-up.. H20-100, Toshiba 32HF72 4X3 Digital Monitor, native off, 1080i fixed output on H20.

On Channel 101 (hd) and all the sports channels will in 5 seconds switch from letterbox to zoom 4.3, pressing the format button has no effect. When you change the channel, the screen reverts back to letterbox and then changes the channel. Reboots, resets have no effect.
This is a known problem on the interactive channels, it's a bug and I expect will be fixed in the next release.

[netconcepts]

This is a known problem on the interactive channels, it's a bug and I expect will be fixed in the next release.

Good to know..
Since there is a new release in limited deployment, maybe it will be fixed when I finally get it.

[HEE HAW]

whats funny to me is that this just started happening
about a week ago.

ALL of my local channels are now 4.3.

and all the problems NETCONCEPTS listed, i am
having also. scifi channell is 4.3 now. and i watch ghost
hunters religiously and it was always 19.6 wide. not
now.

TRAVELL CHANNELL is full time letterbox.

speed vision is off and on. but when i go to record anything off of speed vision, its is laced with nasty
artifacts and the sound jumps in and out. everytime!

this has all come about lately. the bad speed vison about a month and a half ago. the onslaught of 4.3 in the last
week and a half.

why would ALL my local channells [which are hd] suddenly
all go 4.3?

[Tom Servo]

Also true. Why doesn't SiFi show it full 16:9? Because then those with 4:3 displays would lose content on the left and right. Until 4:3 displays are banned to the junk heap, we'll have to put up with these problems.:D

I've heard that SciFi only has the rights to the SD version; HDNet has the rights to Enterprise in 6:9 HD.

Depending on how the show was "framed" they might could trim the edges and center cut the picture. But if it's being shown letterboxed on SciFi, the show was probably framed for 16:9 and cutting off the edges would result, as you said, in lost picture elements.

It seems like NBC Universal was a big proponent of shooting for 16:9 for a long time, then changed to shoot "4:3 safe" like the other networks. This allows them to crop the edges of a picture and keep all the important elements on a 4:3 screen. It means for us 16:9 viewers that the edges are just showing unimporting content, which I hate. I guess it's a necessary compromise for the broadcast networks until widescreens become dominant in the marketplace.

whats funny to me is that this just started happening
about a week ago.

ALL of my local channels are now 4.3.

and all the problems NETCONCEPTS listed, i am
having also. scifi channell is 4.3 now. and i watch ghost
hunters religiously and it was always 19.6 wide. not
now.

TRAVELL CHANNELL is full time letterbox.

speed vision is off and on. but when i go to record anything off of speed vision, its is laced with nasty
artifacts and the sound jumps in and out. everytime!

this has all come about lately. the bad speed vison about a month and a half ago. the onslaught of 4.3 in the last
week and a half.

why would ALL my local channells [which are hd] suddenly
all go 4.3?

So let's see here.

You've checked that the 16:9 selection is checked in the setup?

When you go to the on screen guide, does it fill up the screen or is it 4:3 now too?

What does the Format button do to the picture?

Is the TV hooked up to the DVR by components only, or did you connect the S-Video / composite video as well? If so, are you sure your TV is on the correct input? Is the TV's zoom/crop feature set correctly?

You mentioned that you occasionally get some 16:9 content that fits the screen correctly, right? If that's the case and all the above checks out, I'm gonna have to say the receiver has developed some serious problem and needs to be replaced. :(

We could chalk up the 4:3 on locals to glitches with the digital switchover. Some stations and markets are going through a lot of changes. But if the cable channels are having problems, too, then there is definitely something wrong somewhere with your equipment.

...and while we're at it, let's make sure the terminology is right. On a widescreen TV, 4:3 content should have black bars on both sides (pillar boxed) unless you tell the receiver to stretch to fill the screen. 16:9 content should fill the screen perfectly. 16:9 content on a 4:3 SD channel should display with black bars on the sides and the top/bottom (window boxed). The receiver should be able to stretch the pillar boxes off OR crop the entire picture to fit the screen.