waskydiver

I'm getting HDTV service soon through AT&T cable. I have a 4X3 HDTV (yea... I know). I have heard that the HDTV broadcast will be in 16X9, and on 4X3 TV's the image will be cropped on the sides (instead of black bars).

This seems down right silly to me. Anyone have a more authorized opinion on this or some experience?

Thanks.

Josh Z

HDTV is a 16:9 signal. I can't imagine that your TV would crop it. It will almost certainly present it letterboxed.

Blade

Perhaps you're confusing it with a 16:9 shaped HDTV which can display non-anamorphic widescreen material windowboxed (with the hard coded black bars on the top and bottom, and (usually) gray bars on the left and right sides of the image)?

waskydiver

Well, after getting this installed, the 16:9 signals look great. But, 4:3 signals are cropped on all 4 sides (which sucks).

Icculus

Try plugging in a seperate composite or s-video connection for standard definition material, that should take care of your problems.

waskydiver

That's what I have done. And, it's OK for standard def stuff (though it kinda sucks having to switch inputs all the time). But, 4X3 HD broadcast stuff still shows everything cropped on all 4 sides.

Blade

Your TV should have different zoom modes to compensate for the 4:3/16:9 discrepancy. One of those might be look better to you than the window boxed effect.

Icculus

Ahhh.. I see, I thought you were talking about SD stuff. I don't think there's all that much you can do - the bars on the side are (I'm pretty sure) part of the signal and the bars at the top and bottom are from your TV automatically going into widescreen mode for high def material.

waskydiver

There is no zoom mode on the TV to compensate for this (at least not that I saw).

And, besides, wouldn't that completely defeat the purpose of HD? I mean, all the gained resolution would be lost when you zoomed.

I don't really understand why they would broadcast the 4:3 image pre-cropped on the sides. I always thought that 16:9 TV's were equiped to deal with 4:3 signals natively -- they can either crop or stretch the signals themselves. On the other hand, why would a 4:3 TV include the capability to stretch a 4:3 image?

Ginsu

You cannot change your tv's picture mode when receiving a HD signal. At all. HD signals lock the sets aspect.

Blade

Sorry, my mistake then. I guess I was thinking of playing DVD material on an HDTV unit.

Josh Z

Who is broadcasting HD in 4:3? HDTV is supposed to be a 16:9 signal.

A 4:3 program (like, say, Citizen Kane or a similar older movie) when broadcast in HD should appear windowboxed within the 4:3 area of the frame. Is that what you're talking about when you say "cropped on all 4 sides"? There is a difference between being "cropped" and being windowboxed.

waskydiver

For example, the other night there was a boxing match. It was broadcast in 4:3.

You are correct. I did mean windowboxed. So, if HBO were to broadcast Citizen Kane, I would have the black bars on the top, bottom, left and right on my 4:3 TV, instead of filling the full screen.

Josh Z

The program may be 4:3, but the HD signal is 16:9 with black bars on the sides.

Right, and there's not much that can be done about that, unfortunately, if your TV locks out the zoom functions on HD material.

waskydiver

Thanks for the responses.

From doing searches, it appears as if this is a common problem. I guess I don't really have too much to complain about. After all the HBO and Showtime signals are multi-casted as both analog and HD. So, I can always switch to analog for 4:3 programs.