Vertical Black Bars On Composite Inputs on Tosh 57HX81? (1 Viewer)

[Lowell_B]

Ok, here's the story. I hooked up my SNES awhile ago using the front inputs on my 57HX81, and there are vertical black bars on both sides of the screen, about an inch or two wide on the left, and about half an inch on the right. They are there on every picture size.

Now I got a PS2 recently, and I was just going to use the composite inputs for now, so I try the front inputs, same problem. I try video 1 and 2 in the back, same black lines.

I checked the 56 pt. convergence while on a video 1 input, absolutely perfect. I know the S-Video inputs work fine, as I've used them for the X-Box, but I really, really want to know what's causing these black bars that shouldn't be there.

If anyone knows what the problem could be, and how I could fix it, that'd be great.

Thanks,
Lowell

 

[Christopher a]

Lowell, these black bars that you are seeing on the left and right of the screen are totally normal. As far as I know, SNES games are not anamorphic widescreen and were certainly not intended for playing on a widescreen TV. Remeber, SNES came out long before any of us had Widescreen here in the states.

Now, X-box does support widescreen as it is a newer console. There are settings in your X-box to change to widecreen mode. I usually play Halo...there should be no black bars with this game or many other games I've seen on X-box. Not sure about PS2..sorry!!

Chris

 

[Lowell_B]

Thanks for the reply, but I probably should have made my original post a little clearer, this has nothing to do with widescreen compatability, I can put my PS2 on 4:3 and put my tv on stretch mode, and they're still there. No matter what setting I put the PS2/TV on they're always there.
Instead of displaying a plain 4:3 image which I can then use the tv picture sizes to play with gray bars on the side/in stretch mode, it shows a 4:3 image that is slightly squashed horizontally with uneven black bars.
X-box games that don't support widescreen play great in TheaterWide1. I just recently found a post over on the spot that is like mine except with a Gamecube.
http://www.hometheaterspot.com/cgi-b...21&t=002954&p=

 

[Jesse Skeen]

My 4x3 TV is set for as little overscan as possible, and I've noticed on most video games they put borders around the edges of the screen so nothing important is cut off on any screen that has overscan. Previous TVs I've had have shown part of this, like a line on the left side of the screen on one of them.
The older game systems were very pronounced in this regard; even on TVs with significant overscan the Atari 2600 kept a large border around the screen.
A funny thing about the PS2 is that it's capable of showing games on every available line, but when playing DVDs on it there is a black line at the bottom (when compared with my 'good' player it is covering up part of the picture.)

 

[Derek_C]

Jesse is right about it being an overscan issue. When games are made they go through an approval process from the console manufacturer. One of the requirements is that nothing important in the game (like the HUD) can be cut off by some insane amount of overscan. Somewhere around 10-15% I think. Because TVs come from the factory with a large range of overscan. So most games are made assuming a large overscan amount and are cliped so they don't have to draw as much. This results in black boarders around the game if your overscan is set normal to low.