Letterbox

[Pollcat]

Question for all:

I have a 16x9 30" Samsung TV and a Samsung 150 digital receiver.  I get my signal free of charge (over air).  When I view a show in letterbox (like "ER") with my digital receiver, I can not fill the screen (top & bottom)!  What is the advantage for NBC to broadcast in the letterbox format?

Why does channel 63 or 1-3 always fill my screen whereas 4-1, 1-1 do not?

I do have more options (to fill the screen) with the TV as what I do with the set top box.

[Gregg Lengling]

When an up-convert to 480p is done on a digital channel the format locks your screen at 16:9, that is why on channels 1-1, 4-1, 12-1 when an SD (standard definition) program is run in upconvert mode you are locked at this size with the bands on the side.  When you watch multicast programming or un-upconverted programming you will not be locked into 16:9 format and can resize  your screen.  Even with the sidebars the picture is noticeably better than if they sent it out unconverted.  

If you don't like the display like that you have the choice to tune in to the analog channel and just watch that, then you can size your own picture.

[Pollcat]

10-4.......thanks........but, I had to re-read your post slowly the 2nd and 3rd time.  It sunk in......it still sucks!

[Pat]

The suck-itude will go away eventually, supposedly in 2006.

[Pollcat]

I'm grateful for what I do have.  Guess it's a typical response when you spend big bucks and everything is not perfect.

[BrettD]

Pollcat: I have a Samsung STB sir-T165 and was experiencing the same situation. I thought, what a load of crap to have spent all this cash and yet still "have" to view some channels with the black pillar bars. Alas, I changed the TV setting in the menu of my STB to not use the (what would make sense to us, anyway) normal 16:9 format, but select the 4:3 aspect. Whallah! No more pillar bars after I "zoomed my setop box and it filled the entire screen. By the way, I set the rear selector switch for resolution on my Samsung STB to 750p, instead of 1080i. This allowed the Hitachi RPTV to do the upconversion automatically to 1080i and resulted in a better picture. Hope this may be of some help.

[Pollcat]

My TV won't allow the selector in the 750p setting.  
For "ER" I did switch to 4:3 and enlarge in order to fill the screen, but "West Wing" was in widescreen therefore I could not make the same adjustments.

[Kevin Arnold]

The irony is that the station can choose to transmit this non-HD material in such a way as to allow you to decide whether to stretch the picture or not.  An example of this would be 1-2 or the channel 41 re-feed.  I suppose doing this would add extra work for the engineering staff in order to switch between HD and non HD material but it does return control of our sets to us.