NBC NOT FITTIN ON MY SCREEN!!!!
 

We mentioned this in passing in the Heroes thread, but it's really annoying me now during ER.

The issue:

It's as though the left and right sides of the show are getting cut off....like it's meant to be seen in wide screen, but they're showing it on a square screen WITHOUT "pan and scan."

The effects:

Some of the credits are getting cut off.
Some people are getting cut off, especially in scenes with two people.
Random things become the "center" of the shot -- like in an episode of Heroes, I thought some random bird was important, but it just was the center of the screen (and it shouldn't have been).

What we gonna do?

Depending on the type of tv you have, your cable service, and if you have HD, there is a setting that stipulates the height/width of the image screened. We had some problems with the system not keeping our settings, and had some similar problems with the spacing around the screened image being boxed in, vs. the HD wide screen version.

Well, I don't have HD so I am thinking I'm screwed for now, eh?

My mom has a widescreen TV, and it seems the tops halves of peoples' heads always get cut off when she's watching a full-screen show

I feel like these sort of things are fixable in your TVs options menu, but I don't know your specific TV.

My specific tv is kind of old, but not so old that it has knobs in the front. Anyway, I looked for the options to change the screen up, to no avail.

I don't think it's necessarily a TV problem. I have been frustrated by the same things (and I totally know the "random bird" center-of-the-screen-shot that Senusret is talking about). The reason I don't think it's a TV problem is because other stations' shows are showing up the correct way. For instance, when G4 (I think?) shows episodes of LOST, they're letterboxed (or in HD, whatever the right term is).

Since my TV shows some shows the right way, I can't blame my TV. I really think it's our local NBC affiliate that is causing the problem. I didn't realize it was a problem for people outside my affiliate's area until this came up in the Heroes thread.

This makes me wish DeltAlum visited GC more often - he'd probably have some valuable insight here.

Senusret, I'm hoping that once the "switch" is made in February, everything will be as it should be.

check your cable box menu to see if they allow chagning the viewing settings. Since most TV stations are going digital, they may be changing the standards of how they allow your cable box to display shows on screen.

Your TV by its age may be set to display at 480i (a low resolution), whereas most shows now even in standard definition are broadcasting in 720p (a higher resolution with 1080p the max and will change to 1440p possibly in 2 to 3 years) which may result in your images getting cut off.

In short, if this becomes an increasing problem, it may be time to get a new TV.

SydneyK, so am I.

DS, my cable box menu doesn't have the option. I will give up on NBC before I buy a new tv lol.

Hmmm....what cable company do you have your service thru and depending on the box...you have one of those small boxes that most companies have switched over to or do you have a larger box with DVR capabilites?


The particular setting may just be buried in a setup menu somewhere.

Hey...worst comes to worst you can ALWAYS stream TV on your PC!!!

Small box, comcast, no DVR capabilities.

That's it then...the small box doesn't have the capability to change your resolution on your TV.

Plus, comcast sucks. Our box switches between widescreen and standard format. Which wouldn't be so much of a problem because we have a widescreen TV but the problem really is that it switches between widescreen and standard, and we have to use a zoom to get either of them to stretch across the TV. I'm having trouble explaining it. But it sucks!

There might be a "zoom" button on one of your remotes. It sounds like you have your view set to some sort of a zoom, which as DS said, lets you fill up the whole screen when watching low-def broadcasts.

If there's no zoom button, the zoom function is buried somewhere in your menu. What model cable box do you have? If you can a .pdf of the user's manual (should be available on the manufacturer's website), you should be able to figure out where the zoom feature is and how to turn it off.

Yes yes this is the setting I am talking about. My husband has to reset it to this setting repeatedly because the tv/service provider (or whatever is supposed to retain settings) keeps "forgetting" them. We set ours to the highest and it fixes the problem, but somehow a few days later, it resets itself to the lowest.