I recently upgraded my cable box at home to a HDTV box and I noticed that normal non-HD channels have very thin black bars on the side. This happens on both HD boxes at my house on my Panasonic plasma and Sharp LCD. The black bars on the side aren't the normal 4:3 bars, it's a lot thinner than that, and I even tried different viewing modes and it still has the bars on the side. However when watching HD programming, the black bars disappear and the screen is filled. Even the Channel guide fills up the screen. I have both HDTV boxes connected via Component instead of HDMI (if that matters). Anyone have an idea why this happens?

Thanks.

Could it possibly be your tv's settings?

Same thing happens here - I think it's a Passport issue, but don't know for sure. I've gotten used to it however.

It's not that big of an issue, but I do hope there's a fix for it.

It is not the TV settings, because I tried every setting possible (both TV settings and HD Box settings). Also before I upgraded to an HD Box, Standard Def programs did not have this problem.

If anyone wants to know what HD box I have, it's a Samsung SMT H3050.

Recall a thread on this 'black-line' problem 1-2 years back. Not sure if a cure was mentioned. Using 'avsforum' as an initial Google.com search term might locate the thread better than an AVS-only search. -- John