Sony Wega and HDTV (1 Viewer)

[Christopher_Ry]

I am a home theatre newbie and I have a question. I hope I am posting this in the right place. I have a Sony Wega KV-36HS500. I have been very happy with this set. This past week I got a HDTV converter from my Time Warner cable provider. I got everything hooked up and I must say HDTV is everything it is cracked up to be. While watching a show that was filmed in HD it is shown in 16:9 format. If I were to watch let say the local news or even Monday Night Footbal tonight on a HDTV channel it scrunches the picture down to about a 30" picture. I have 2"black bars at the top and 2"bars on the sides of the picture. I thought that maybe my converter box (Motorola DCT5100) was set up incorrectly, but it all looks good. After speaking with a coworker, he told me I should only have bars on the sides and not on the top. Has anyone out there experienced this and have any suggestions on any of the settings that I may have overlooked?

Your help is appreciated!!!

Sorry for the long post

 

[Grant B]

No you are correct, if it is broadcast on a 4 x 3 ratio, it will appear as you describe

 

[Christopher_Ry]

Thansk Grant!

I am glad to hear that it is not something that I overlooked. I am a little dissappointed that I cant stecth the picture out to make it a little bigger. I was glad to read on this forum that the reason Monday Night Footbal was broadcast at 4:3 last night was because they did not have enought time to set everything up because of the change of venue on short notice due to the fires in San Diego. MNF was a big factor in getting the HDTV converter.

Thanks again.

 

[Michael TLV]

Greetings

AFA the TV is concerned, the signal you are feeding it is HD ...

The TV does not differentiate between true HD and upconverted material. It's all HD to it. If you could stretch the nonHD material, you would also be able to stretch the HD material too.

Regards

 

[Christopher_Ry]

Hey Michael,

I have a question in regards to what you said. My TV will alow me to change a regular digital signal to 16:9 on all non HD channels. Why wont it let me change a 4:3 broadcast on a HD channel to 16:9, if is seeing everything as HD?

Thanks

 

[Michael TLV]

Greetings

It's just the way the feature list goes. Toshiba implemented a feature that allowed the changes on an HD signal as well, but removed it again this year.

They probably figure that you should just watch 4:3 material via the non-hd signal output ... like S-video or composite video.

Regards

 

[Christopher_Ry]

Thanks for the info!