3x4 material looking almost square on Pioneer SD533 (1 Viewer)

I have the SD533. It is hooked up through regular cable though the antenna A input and digital cable through video input 1. When I am watching 3x4 material on the set in the 3x4 mode the picture looks almost square. When I watch it thru the digital cable input it looks more like 3x4. The side bars are also much wider on the Antenna A input. At first I thought that it might be slightly squeezing the picture... But after I did a comparison, there is about another inch or so of material on each side of the digital picture.

Is this normal for this set? I also get the same effect when watching 3x4 DVDs through my number 2 input. Depending on which 16x9 mode I have it set to.

I asked this over on Hometheaterspot but have yet to get a reply! Have any of you SD533 owners noticed this?

Thanks,
Ric

Yep. If I need to watch 4:3 DVD material, I pass it through a MyHD card via S-Vid (with black bars). If it's OTA, I stretch it.

It's not a big deal for me -- the grey bars are too distracting for me anyway, so I never use 4:3 mode.

Man has it...most 16x9 RPTVs, when given a 4x3 signal from an interlaced source, will added extra overscan on the sides of the image when in 4x3 mode.

A progressive scan DVD player with built-in 4x3 squeeze like the Panasonic RP91, will NOT add overscan at all. You are actually getting more image!

Some RPTVs that have 4x3 squeeze in progressive mode (like my Toshiba TW40X81) don't add overscan either, but with the side-effect that you can see a "rainbow" line on the left side of the image, and fuzzies on the right side. Yuck...I'd rather have a slight overscan to remove the line, and also stop the line from burning in.

Of course, your geometry for each of the inputs could be differing...