4:3 safe graphics - Page 2

That was common practice by all networks when there were separate SD and HD network feeds. After the analog cutoff, networks had to assume that most of the SD feeds would be derived from a downconversion of the HD transmission and moved the bugs to safe 4:3.

The reason why you're not getting any complaints from OTA viewers is they can shut it off. If you really want progress in 16x9 television, then cable companies are going to need to adopt a system similar to OTA where the end viewer can choose their picture settings.

Some people are so shocked about it, I'm not at all. What happened with the MLB yesterday helped confirm my opinion. People are more pissed about part of their screen wasted than they are about stuff being cut off. Nobody complained on the local FOX's facebook or website, the local thread or other places on the netz I looked. If you only have a standard definition TV you're only thinking within those four walls, so the assumption is "they're not showing the score anymore" or "they goofed and put the logo in the wrong spot". Which apparently is not that big of a deal. Just like if CBS put the logo "where it was 10 years ago" people would think "cool, a bug free episode of CSI: Miami!!". Of course the networks wouldn't be as thrilled.

I'm surprised FOX didn't try to pull this **** when they still had control of what went out over the SD feed. Although I know the backlash would've been huge if you turn on the ball game only to find an ant farm with at least 1/3 of your screen wasted.

I am not into baseball so I didn't know about this until a viewer complained. I went back and looked at the air check and then came here to AVSForum to see what, if anything, was being said.

I do like how CBS uses the area outside of the 4:3 protected area for additional graphics. Such as during football season where 4:3 viewers see a score from another game while 16:9 viewers see the down and ball location.

While we're at it can someone give me the lowdown on the tuner boxes showing everything letterboxed, what's the resolution that you get? Seems like the picture is crisper.

I don't really care but i would imagine if someone in the family complained the tuner box should be able to zoom/stretch.

Are you talking about using it on a SDTV? Usually "stretching" refers to horizontally filling a HDTV screen.

But no, OTA converter boxes do not show everything letterboxed. Even the cheapest, most base model box should include at least "cropped" and "letterbox" aspect ratio settings. Some of the nicer ones also include a "squeeze" setting and the useless "set by program" option.

The resolution is whatever the station being watched broadcasts at, downrezzed to 480i. Picture is very crisp. I had a much sharper, brighter clearer picture through OTA than I had even with the so-called "digital" cable channels.

The picture is crisper when you push it back, the same way any image seems less crisp as you zoom into it. It's simply how your eye is seeing the overall image, but technically nothing changed.


OTA is the single best way to see any TV image (assuming they don't have multiple channels that take away bandwidth from the main channel). Supposedly local HD stations are supposed to look exactly the same on digital cable as they do over the air, but many would beg to differ. But "digital" cable for SD channels (or even some HD channels) are just digital, not necessarily a perfect representation of the original image being sent from the network. Kinda like talking on a cell phone. Yep, it's digital but it's sometimes hard to understand, and usually not as clear as a landline.

@nickdawg

Why do you hate letterbox so much? I hate pan-n-scan. Do you pan-n-scan your widescreen TV show DVDs and widescreen movie DVDs?

I think you misunderstood. This is about broadcasting 16:9 content in a letter-boxed 4:3 format. So the picture ends up having black bars on the top and on the sides. I would much rather have a full 4:3 window and lose the sides of the image than have to zoom in on the image to cut off the black bars.

By "cut off" I'm assuming you mean the letterbox bars at the top and bottom.

Just set the DVD player to always center cut widescreen DVDs. This won't help 2.35:1 movies that are letterboxed within 16:9, but it will reduce the size of the black bars.

Or better yet. Tell your parents to stop bitching and watch the "complete" picture.

I can understand the complaints about windowboxing (which I also call breadboxing), but nickdawg's signature implies that ALL letterboxing is on his hate list.

And what I call "Postage Stamp" Video

They still do have control over the SD feed, it's just up to the cable company to respect it. Here in Detroit, Comcast dutifully follows Fox's (and NBC's) AFD signal, and the game was shown letterboxed in SD. That's the way it should be.

Yea, they have that zoom feature (not all players do by the way), but they can barely turn the thing on and watch it let alone do that. I've told them that the picture is not being cut off, and in fact they are seeing the whole picture as opposed to zooming in that actually does cut off the image. But, for some people its simply about filling their screen, or else something seems wrong.