Child Item

Site Totals

61410 Questions Answered 270 Categories

Black borders on some SD channels using FiOS

One of our TVs is an older model that uses a SD set top box. Recently SOME of the channels on that TV now have black borders on the top and bottom of the picture. Other channels still use the full screen. Has anyone else with SD set top boxes and older TVs experienced this problem? It doesn't happen on any of our newer TVs that use the HD set top box. Is FiOS trying to get us to upgrade to HD set top boxes?

Comments

Hubrisnxs

I noticed this too, Fox and a number of other TV stations are doing the same thing and broadcasting it that way from their satellite feeds.

http://www.foxnews.com/widescreentv/widescreenPage4x3.html

you can use your tv stretch feature to fix it, if your tv has the option.

Fox did this a while ago, others are making the change on their own timeline.

As television technology transitions, so do we! On September 28, 2009,
FOX News Channel made a format change to the way we telecast.

Why? Because we wanted all of our viewers to be able to watch FNC the same way regardless of old or new model TV sets.

Now, all of our viewers get to watch our channel in the widescreen format. Settings on your television may need to be adjusted to properly view our new telecast. Learn more about setting your TV for the widescreen format. And don’t worry, this in no way changes the way we bring you the news.

MA-VZ

Interesting explanation, but really doesn't explain what the same issue occurs on so many channels, and what the change affecting more channels now seems to be coincident with recent FW ugprade pushed out.

It is not convenient to have to change the TV to zoom (eg, Cinnema mode) to watch these programs utilizing the full size of the TV and eliminate the black box on all sides, and then switch back for other HD or correctly sized programming on other channels. The question I have is why doesn't the verizon FW use the meta data associated with the program delivery to do the right and obvious thing? If the information is lacking in the meta data, why not add it anywhere along the distirbution line ahead of the TV. Even the STB FW could detect this and adjust the scaling automatically. This problem should have been figured out when HDTV was first introduced, yet it still lingers. I can only hope 4K transition is handled more seemlessly.

Child Item