I just bought a now-discontinued (I think) 23" HD Sony Bravia KDL-23S2010 and a Scientific Atlanta HD 8300 cable box/recorder with Time Warner in NYC and the bars on the side of the image for regular TV is bright grey instead of black and I hate it.

I called Sony and asked if I could change this and they didn't seem to know and suggested it was a cablebox issue. The cable company of course said it sounded like a Sony issue.

When there is a 4:3 picture on an HD channel, however, the side bars are black.

Is there a way to change the bars from grey to black? How?

Thanks in advance.

It is the box, I have the same and it is annoying, so I just stretch the picture out.

Are you certain? Should I give up my quest to get the bars from grey to black?

I hate the grey because sometimes there are top and bottom bars in black so I've got a checkerboard on my monitor to deal with. Stretching the image is not an option for me because ... you know, everybody gets fat.

Is it easy to change the cable box to output a 4:3 image instead of 16:9? If the cable box is really inserting the gray bars, if you set it to output 4:3 it would be up to the TV to handle the bars. Of course, you'd have to change back to 16:9 for HD. It seems like it would be a PITA to keep changing back and forth, but if you're determined to avoid stretching (like I would be), you could do that. The TV might have to have its setting changed each time as well.

I'd probably just leave it stretched when I'm flipping through channels to find out what's on, but then make the switch(es) when I get to a program I want to watch.

The "black" side bars are generated by the set. You should be able to adjust this with the brightness and contrast adjustment on the on-screen setup. Also, you may have the backlight up to max. Turn it down. Connect the set to a computer and with Paint (or something) see if all the colors and black look OK. If so, the setup is wrong.

Have you ever considered "Wide Zoom?" This is Sony's smarter stretch mode. The people don't look fat. In fact, it's the second best zoom mode for 4:3 content I've seen in a set aside from Sharp's "Smart Stretch."

I had the same box with TWC in Manhattan. The only way to get rid of them was to set the mode to stretch, which makes 4:3 signals 16:9, then having the TV crush the stretched image back down to 4:3, replacing the grey bars with black from the TV. A total hack, but no apparent loss in image quality (it's SD after all).

There is a way to set Comcast's cable boxes to output native resolution over Component and HDMI. I can't recall where I found the instructions to do so but it is in the service menu for both SA and Motorola boxes. I have three SA 8300HDs that do this and one Motorola DCT6412 that output natively.

This should bypass any signal degradation that might occur using Chris NYC's approach.

I just bought a now-discontinued (I think) 23" HD Sony Bravia KDL-23S2010 and a Scientific Atlanta HD 8300 cable box/recorder with Time Warner in NYC and the bars on the side of the image for regular TV is bright grey instead of black and I hate it.

I called Sony and asked if I could change this and they didn't seem to know and suggested it was a cablebox issue. The cable company of course said it sounded like a Sony issue.

When there is a 4:3 picture on an HD channel, however, the side bars are black.

Is there a way to change the bars from grey to black? How?

Thanks in advance.

I have the same box, I can go into the boxes menu and change the side bars from light,medium or dark.