High Definition Television (HDTV)

I have a Mitsubishi HD1080 tv and an HR21-200 reciever.  One day last week, out of the blue, I started getting black bars on the side of my picture.  Not on everything, It seems like it's mostly on local programming...news etc.  The regular HD channels are fine.   What happened?  I made no changes that I'm aware of.  Thanks for any advice you can give.

Are you seeing these black bars on your local HD channels?  Most likely the station has put them there to "fill out" their 16:9 format from a 4:3 video source.  There's nothing you can do about those.

Yes, it's on my local HD channels, but I never had this problem before last week.  I'm trying to figure out what changed, so I can change it back.

Your local channels must have changed their broadcast. 

I doubt they all changed on the same day, but in any case shouldn't I be able to get rid of the bars with the "format" button on the remote?  It has no effect when I push it.  I've tried changing the HDTV settings in "System Setup" but I guess I haven't got the right combination.  Any suggestions?  Thanks. 

Is it on ALL of their programming or just some of it? Like for instance, does a network show that is broadcast in HD(like CSI Miami) also have the black sidebars? You cannot "stretch" a 16:9 HD content using the DirecTV receiver. You "may" be able to use the TV's Zoom/Stretch but there's no guarantee that this will work either. Complain to your local stations is about all you can do.

Well that makes more sense than anything I've heard so far, although I still don't understand why it happened out of the blue last week.  I guess I have to live with black bars.  Thanks.

You should not see black bars on HD material, like most peak time programming. But as has been posted, if you watch an "HD channel" and they are broadcasting sd materil (4:3 aspect ratio) the ststion adds the black bars to fill out the screen to 16:9.

DCD's explanation sums it up pretty well, but the story gets even worse: if you're watching an HD channel that is broadcasting SD content in Letterbox format, then you will see black or gray bars all the way around the picture and the DirecTV remote can't do anything about it! I have no idea why Bravo, SciFi, USA , Spike and TNT (to name a few of the usual suspects) would feel compelled to broadcast content in its original widescreen glory, and then choke the life out of it with an SD feed, but they still do it way too regularly! To be fair, those same channels have a lot of excellent HD programming, but this is a bit of a pet peev for me.

Thankfully, as someone else mentioned, but downplayed its availability as a solution for this dilemma, almost all HD TV's have an adjustment for 'Aspect Ratio' or 'Screen Format' which is able to change the display of HD content. But (and that's a pretty big 'but' you have there, sir) this solution has three important limitations:

1) You lose resolution when you zoom in on the image, so it's not really HiDef, although it still looks better than any SD channel you blow up to fill the screen, like some of my favorite 'letterboxers,' AMC and FMC, which aren't yet available in HD. :(

2) HD TV's vary widely as to how flexible they are in their zoom capabilities, (they may crop too much of the picture ) so you may not always be happy with the result. If you're shopping for a TV, you might factor this into your choice.

3) All these screen format choices may just be too darn complicated to navigate, so some folks will probably live with the way their screen is set. We can hope that those people will funnel their energies into complaining to all the stations about literally getting with the (HD) program.

ggtwo,

Below is an excerpt from Wikipedia, explaining the "window boxing" phenomenon you are seeing:

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Multiple aspect ratios create additional burdens on filmmakers and consumers, and confusion among TV broadcasters. It is common for a widescreen film to be presented in an altered format (cropped, letterboxed or expanded beyond the Original Aspect Ratio). It is also not uncommon for windowboxing to occur (when letterbox and pillarbox happen simultaneously). For instance, a 16:9 broadcast could embed a 4:3 commercial within the 16:9 image area. A viewer watching on a standard 4:3 (non-widescreen) television would see a 4:3 image of the commercial with 2 sets of black stripes, vertical and horizontal (windowboxing or the postage stamp effect). A similar scenario may also occur for a widescreen set owner when viewing 16:9 material embedded in a 4:3 frame, and then watching that in 16:9. It is also not uncommon that a 4:3 image is stretched horizontally to fit a 16:9 screen to avoid pillar boxing.

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If you would like to spend a little time researching, there is information in this article and it's links to explain most of the "funky stuff" being done with the video content's aspect ratio when HD & SD material are "intertwined" in a content provider's HD and/or SD channel broadcasts. See link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_(image)

What worries me about this issue is that our HDTV is plasma and it says in the instruction booklet that those bars should not be on the screen more than 5% of the time and, of course, they are due to the amount of non-HD programming that is out there. Has anyone dealt with this issue? I have not found a way to actually stretch the SD programming picture so that the bars are removed. It seems to return to the SD bars even when I remove the Native resolution option.

I believe dcd's post on 4/8 above explains it well.  If you are watching an SD channel, you can use the WIDE button on your TV to stretch the SD picture.  If you are watching a HD channel that is showing 4:3 material and adding sidebars, there is no function that will stretch that.  The TV and/or receiver has no way of knowing those bars are there, since they are put in by the broadcaster to fill out the 16:9 screen.

galeth:

As long as your Plasma TV's contract & brightness settings are set properly (not in "torch mode"), you won't have any problems with those side bars.  Burn-in really isn't a problem on modern Plasma TVs anymore. 

Litz is right about changing the settings on your TV from the oversaturated 'Vivid' (among other marketing names for the) default setting on most showroom and 'fresh-out-of-the-box' TV's. And new plasma TV 's are better protected than older ones; but I think it is a bit of an overstatement to say that burn-in is not a problem on modern plasmas. The technology is still more prone to burn-in, but 1) most TV's, DVD players and cable/satellite boxes have screen savers built into them; 2) the TV stations usually don't leave completely static images on the screen all day long; 3) and the annoying switch back and forth between HD, SD, 4x3 and 16x9 formats during commercial breaks, varies all sections of the screen. These are all factors that help protect plasma TV's. (Trivia note: the black bars are not a problem because they cause burn-in, but because they could potentially leave a distinct line where there is no burn-in. Burn-in occurs when a constant image or color remains in the same screen position for several hours : black is not a 'color' on the screen, the way it is on paper or other media; it is the 'off' position of each pixel on the screen. So if disaster did strike, the black bars would not produce burn-in but reveal it against the screen segments that remained constantly lit.)

The biggest thing to be on the lookout for is when a PC or a game console is hooked up to a plasma display: if the system ever locks up, freezing an image on the screen, it can cause the image to burn in because the operating system can't trigger the screen saver when it has crashed. You have to make sure that the TV's own screen saver is set to turn on, as a failsafe. (Someone might correct me on this, but I believe DirecTV 's screen saver works outside the operating system of the receiver, so it will trigger for inactivity, even if the the unit freezes up.)

Mike,

Be aware that most HD TV's made in the last five or six years actually do have the capability to zoom in on an image, even on an HD channel; so it is possible to fill the screen (without stretching or distortion) with 'window-boxed' content, but you can't do it from the DirecTV remote ... you have to use the TV's own remote control! There are notable limitations, which I touch upon in my 4/16/09 post above, and some TV's are much more flexible than others; but almost all of them provide some reshaping for an HD broadcast of SD content. You just have to remember to change it back to 'normal' when you're finished watching the crippled content: otherwise you could end up confusing the next person who turns on the TV and can't figure out why so much of the screen is missing!

ggtwo:  True, for "window-boxed" content the Zoom on your TV will work.  I've done that with some old West Wing episodes that Bravo HD is showing (by the way, why don't they have the HD feed anyway??).  Good point.

Yeah, Bravo is high on my ' razzie ' list for handcuffing their own content. I mentioned a few more above, but most of the stations are guilty to some degree. Almost as frustrating is that you can't always trust the Guide to flag HD content: a movie or show episode may not display the HD symbol in the Guide; but if I spot check the show/movie, I'll sometimes find that it is actually being broadcast in HD . Once I know this is the case for that station , I'll record a particular series or a subsequent showing of that movie, because the schedule upload error is generally consistent in the group . :-)

I had the same thing happen to me yesterday, but my sidebars are gray, and it damanged my plasma tv. All of a sudden most of my channels appeared with the gray sidebars. So if I set my TV to 16:9 i get the sidebars, but if I set it to stretch I don't. But now I can't read any information around my picture

Check your Plasma TV's brightness and contrast settings.  There's no way those gray bars should have permanently damaged your Plasma TV, unless you left those settings in "torch mode".

Did you read through some of the other entries on this thread? There are several that could be helpful in understanding what is going on with your TV picture. In particular, the 4/8/09 entries by dcd and djdicetn summarize well the frustrations of moving back and forth between high definition and standard definition, dealing with both channels and content; and djdicetn's response to my 4/16/09 post, has a useful Wikipedia link that could explain quite a bit. If you can wade through my long-winded prose, my 4/16 and 5/6/09 entries specifically address the difference between changing the screen format for the DirecTV receiver , and changing the screen format of your television itself .

You said that "it damaged my plasma tv." Do you mean that the top and sidebars are now always gray , when you view content that doesn't fill your screen, like letter-boxed movies or standard definition channels? Or do you mean that you see the 'shadow' of those gray sidebars, when you look at your blank, powered-off TV , first thing in the morning, before you turn the TV on? If you meant the latter, then you have "plasma burn-in" which is indeed bad juju: that's the subject raised in this thread by galeth on 5/5, which litzdog911 and I discussed earlier. But I think you are talking about the top and sidebars simply changing shades or colors: they are gray now instead of black . This is actually an appearance choice made in the DirecTV receiver menu, which some mindless cretin has dared to alter on your TV!

Unfortunately, I can't get in front of my DirecTV receiver and remote right now, to take you through the menus; but if you call DirecTV Tech Support , they should be able to walk you through it: just tell them you want to change the shade/color of the bars on the screen, when you view non-HD channels. Leave a message back here if they help you solve it or not, and I'll find the commands, if you need them.

I would love to have the commands to correct this irratating proplem that has just occured on our tv's.  It happened last night about 10:15pm without so much as a warning or anything.  Now we have the sometimes black, sometimes gray bars on all four sides of the picture.  It's like the picture is a lot smaller now and the quality isn't as good as it was before the "change".  I don't know what to do and would appreciate any suggestions.  I tried the aspect ratio on the actual tv remotes but it didn't change anything.  The bars won't go away.

libba - you need to tell us more about your situation. Start a new post (using the button at top right when you look at the first forum page), make sure you tell us what receiver/DVR you have, which channels this is affecting and what is your zip code.

libba,

Are you still experiencing the problem now, or has it gone away since Thursday night? Does it affect all, most, or just a few (perhaps local only) channels? Storms and other technical issues can sometimes affect individual broadcasts, either locally, or originating from a single source or particular area, like LA or Chicago. This may happen even if your own satellite reception never goes out.

When you said that the window-boxing effect (bars on all sides) "just occurred on our tv's " did you mean multiple TV's with multiple DirecTV receivers? How many of each , and are all TV's hooked to individual receivers? If you have an HD -DVR , is the previously recorded HD content displaying with bars all the way around?

Are the bars black on one TV and gray on another, or do they seem to change based on the channel tuned or the program shown at the time?

Texasbrit is probably right, from a problem-tracking vantage point: it makes sense to start a new post for your issue. But check some of the responses in this thread for possible resolutions to to your problem, especially the difference between adjustments made on your TV(s) and those made on the DirecTV receiver(s), which can both affect the bars on your screen, depending on your currently tuned station and the content being broadcast at the moment.

If you do start another thread, you are welcome to copy me on any extra info or questions you have.

My Sony TV remote has a button marked "wide".  If you press that button you can get an aspect ration called "normal" which will produce big sidebars even on full HD broadcasts.  In my case, the ratio marked "full" produces the correct picture shape and size.  That could account for a sudden and dramatic change in what you see on your screen.