no 16:9 for hd channel?

I've had similar issues trying to get my UTV to display 16:9 for my HDTV...

Have you verified that your TV isn't "converting" the feed or causing a conflict.

Is there a way to verify that the channel feed you have is actually broadcasting a 16:9 feed? The UTV might default to a 4:3 feed if it isn't getting 16:9... Kind of like the Dolby Digital feed... it will output optical Digital even when Dolby isn't broadcast and switch when it is available.

Since the Digital Transition my Locals are all "cropped" (DTV is re-broadcasting the various channels' Digital OTA) and my attempts to view some of that cut off content is not possible unless I switch to the live OTA feed.

The only programming that I have seen use the 16:9 feature of UTV is NBC Universal content on NBC and USA channels. It seems to require a signal to expand a compressed 16:9 image to its full width. It has nothing to do with HD since the feature far predates HD. I am sure that other channels that have been showing letterboxed content on 4:3 signals probably would work with this feature but it is getting rare.

The best we can hope for short of ditching UTV for HD equipment is programming on standard signals that are broadcast in letterbox (without this signal) that we can use the zoom feature on HD sets to fill the screen (HBO original programming works well but not movies, most channels currently on DirecTV not showing a pan and scan version of the show).

Refusing to ditch my UTV for now!

Agree with the observation on limited letterbox format with SD DirecTV / UTV. However, I have a 4:3 projection television and set the UTV to the same 4:3, so I guess I am relying on the upstream feed for the 16:9 signal. No weirdness with stretching of the picture.

On a side note, TCM broadcasts almost everything in letterbox, uncut and without commercials. I see Spike, BBC-America and AMC still showing letterbox movies as well, however they suffer from commercials. I use the advance search feature and select letterbox when searching for content. I bet 2/3 of the returns are TMC.