General > General Technical Chat
Does My TV have 4:3 or 16:9 Aspect?
bw2341:
From your posts, it seem that you have:
* 4K TV
* Comcast cable service
* basic cable package with standard definition only
* cable box connected via HDMI at 1080 resolution
* the left (and right?) sides of the picture are cut off with black vertical barsIs this correct?
Try pressing the "info" button on the cable box remote that displays an overlay banner with the channel name and number along with the program name. The button may be called something else on your remote.
If the info banner extends past the sides of the image into the black vertical bars, Comcast must be cropping off the sides of the picture at the source.
I can understand why they might do this. In North America, widescreen SDTVs never caught on and were quickly replaced with HDTVs. I don't think auto-switching of aspect ratios for SD ever existed for NTSC broadcasts or analog composite connections.
Comcast's SD channels would mainly serve customers on the cheapest plans, possibly with very old SD only cable boxes that have no aspect ratio support. So if a broadcaster has an HD widescreen picture, Comcast has to either crop the sides or add horizontal black bars to show it widescreen.
If some channels are cropped and other channels are widescreen, each individual channel operator may have told Comcast how they want their channel presented.
dnwheeler:
--- Quote from: bostonman on September 09, 2020, 02:13:37 am ---I changed the station to The People's Court where a logo is in the bottom corner (this would allow a constant video feed with something remaining in the same location).
I noticed no matter which ratio I selected, either in the cable box or TV, the P (and maybe) the E in People's Court wasn't displayed. Also, I had black vertical bars on the left and right.
--- End quote ---
It is likely the station has old 4:3 content that they are stretching to 16:9. Many stations do the "side stretch" where they stretch less in the middle than on the sides to try to reduce distortion in the center. There isn't much you can do other than live with the choices the broadcaster has made.
bostonman:
My TV (LG 65 Inch - 65UK6090PUA) only has settings for 4:3, 16:9, vertical zoom, zoom all, normal (whatever that means), and maybe horizontal zoom.
If I zoom the picture, it fills the screen, but when I look at the channel banner info through the cable box, it's stretched beyond the TV indicating 'zoom' is not a good setting (which I already assumed).
One of the few stations completely fills the screen in 16:9 mode and looks great, other stations have black vertical bars on each side, some have vertical and horizontal bars showing a smaller picture, and another, no matter what I do, clearly has the logo hanging off the picture.
I think it's silly to have such video issues from TV stations and/or cable companies. I can understand buying a 65" TV and having black vertical bars on the sides because all the stations are broadcasting in the same smaller ratio size, but the variation between stations is just silly. Plus I never know if the person I'm looking at on the screen really has a 52" waist, or, if I change the ratio, if the person really has a size 12" waist.
Now what if I watch a BluRay that has a different aspect ratio (I don't know the variations, so I won't list a ratio). Does this mean some of the picture will not fit onto my 16:9 setting and I'll not see the who picture?
paulca:
Surely the TV has an HDMI input and you have a PC, laptop, DVD PLayer, raspberry pi to connect to it?
Also, most TV signals are expected to be broadcast and received with "overscan", certainly in the UK they are. When you connect a PC to a TV and the PC does not correctly identify and configure the display you will see the top, bottom, left and right edges cut off as the image is scaled up to NOT fit the screen assuming it's a standard TV feed. This is to hide the crud around the top/bottom edges often used for data bursts or "Teletext"
If you think you have a it bad, I have 21:9 monitors. A lot of web based players get really confused and display 16:9 downscaled with black bars top, bottom, left and right, giving me a 50% sized 16:9 image in the middle of the screen! It's exactly the kind of bug that happened when people moved from 4:3 monitors to 16:9, web players displayed 16:9 as 4:3 but rescaled it to fit on the 16:9 screen with borders top, bottom, left and right.
With regards the TV. Set it to AUTO or "Just Scan" and leave it alone. Try a different source. Get a new cable provider. Ditch the cable completely and move to Online services using a $100 reconditioned micro-office PC with an IR remote.
vk6zgo:
This is not usually a problem with "free to air" terrestrial TV stations in Oz.
Some channels have a lot of 3:4 content, which screens more in a "picture frame" format, having narrower black bars top & bottom.
This seems to have been done wherever it was that the original analog material was converted, so with the major networks, the display shifts seamlessly from 9:16 to 3:4 & back again.
The only time I have seen the "fat" picture is when a local "community station" was showing legacy BW stuff, like "Bonanza" & "Petticoat Junction".(perhaps limited appeal, so not worth converting properly?)
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