I have a weird problem, the 720p and 1080i HD channels has vertical black bars. When Lost was on, it looked awesome, but then when it was over and the news came up, it automatically switched backed to black bars on the left and right.

The menu shows that the signal is 720p and another channel which had 1080i also had the vertical black bars.

I also downloaded the the burn-in disk and it has the horizontal black bars on the top and bottom.

For all channels and sources, it's set to 16:9. What worries me is that even the burn-in disc has the black bars. Did I burn it incorrectly or do I have something set incorrectly?

This is a sammy 5054 :)

When HD channels aren't showing 16:9 content, the picture will have black bars on the left and right sides. This is perfectly normal.

Thanks for the reply! Is there a reason why the burn-in disc would have the horizontal black bars as well? If anything that should not have it right?

Also, what's the difference between running that disc vs some other DVD that I loop through the day?

thank in adv! :)

One thing to consider is that some DVD players have an option of outputting a 4:3 image or a 16:9 image. If it is set to 4:3, you may still get the black bars. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong on that though. I'd check your DVD player setup though. The benefits to the break-in DVD over some other DVD are two-fold. First, the break-in DVD will cover your whole screen. Some DVD movies, even though they're in widescreen format, will have black bars at the top and bottom, and that defeats the purpose of break-in. The other advantage with the break-in DVD is that there are no menus or other static images that could potentially end up on the screen for an extended period of time (a regular movie usually defaults back to the main menu after it finishes the credits--this would be bad to leave on for an extended period of time). I hope that helps!

Definitely try to stay away from black bars (and gay bars :D ) during the burn in period and don't let the burn in disc run with black bars or you will have a brighter picture where the black bars were.

thanks for the replies. drrick was right, the dvd was set to 4:3, when in there and changed to 16:9 and I'm getting the full screen now with no black bars.

Does it seem like it sits on the same color image for a tad bit too long before it changes or is it just me? I'm tempted to just download an excerpt from the Discovery HD channel and loop that through. Seems like this would give you a better 'real' world simulation versus patterns? Just a thought.

Pastrami, I agree that it felt like the break-in DVD felt like it was sticking on pictures for longer than I was initially comfortable with, but once I felt confident that the screens actually did change and that it didn't just sit on one for a really long time, I got over it. I don't think the break-in DVD is going to be a problem for you, however, if you have Discovery HD, I believe they actually run all HD all the time, meaning there isn't any letterboxed (or pillarboxed--vertical bars) stuff on there--so in theory, you could let it play Discovery HD for an extended period of time. Of course, you could also just try to make sure you play primarily full screen stuff for the first 100 hrs or so. A little letterboxing or pillarboxing probably won't hurt, you just don't want to watch a lot of it. The primary advantage to doing some sort of break-in is that the 100 hrs happens a little faster. Hope that helps! Enjoy your new TV!