XfinityTV and Equipment

[itdoesntmatter]

Most of the channels I watch have black bars on the top and the bottom of the sreen so I have half a picture.  What is up with this "upgrade"?  I don't want it.  I just installed the new boxes on my TV's and it is horrible.  The people look all squashed. 

[ComcastTeds]

---

itdoesntmatter wrote:

Most of the channels I watch have black bars on the top and the bottom of the screen so I have half a picture.  What is up with this "upgrade"?  I don't want it.  I just installed the new boxes on my TV's and it is horrible.  The people look all squashed. 

---

Not sure what kind of cable box that you are having this issue on but if it says Cisco or Scientific-Atlanta on the front panel and it is an HD cable box you may need to adjust your HD settings (via the HD Wizard) and User settings, Details on how to do that can be found at the link below:.

http://por-chr.cimcontent.net/ui/pdf/meetyourguide/High_Definition_TV_Setup_Guide.pdf

[itdoesntmatter]

I didn't get a cable box.  I got that little thing Comcast forced on us.  What's it called? DAT? 

[ComcastTeds]

DTA (Digital Transport Adaptor).  

The DTA's have no settings you can change in this regard. They just pass on the signal that is sent to them from Comcast and the programmer (network). Basically, more and more channels are letterboxing their feeds (putting them into 16 x 9 aspect ratio) when airing HD programs. 

Are there specific channels where you have seen this? I know that for ESPN, ESPN 2 Fox News and others this is standard practice.  

[itdoesntmatter]

HGTV, History, Discovery, etc etc etc.  Seems like every channel I want to watch is half a picture.  This is really disgusting.  I have to use closed captioning so by the time you add that, I have squashed people and captioning taking up the other half.  There should be some solution to this.  What is it?  It worked fine before I had to add that box.