New HD channel issues...

[kevecu]

Does anyone else have issues with the new HD channels not showing in fullscreen 16:9 ratio. On some of the new channels there are small black bars along the sides, unless the channel is at commercial. These programs are shown as HD in the guide and I am concerned I may have an issue with equipment. On one of my tv's, the subtitles that are shown at times at the bottom of the screen are cut off about halfway through the wording. I have a new Samsung DLP and all settings seem to be fine.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[ChrisPC]

It's not your equipment, everyone else is seeing the same thing. The guide is wrong; these channels are showing SD material upconverted.

 

[themilkman]

That’s kind of misleading, DIRECTV dose not upcovert the signal and then call it HD. They don’t use direct control over the signal to up convert a signal to a higher format than was sent to them, what directv gets you get. The stations that send the programming are in control of what they send as true HD. In other words if they send lemons DTV is not attempting to make lemonade they broadcast the lemons.
My point is that they are not attempting to mislead anyone, the guide has been kind of buggy.

 

[raoul5788]

That’s kind of misleading, DIRECTV dose not upcovert the signal and then call it HD. They don’t use direct control over the signal to up convert a signal to a higher format than was sent to them, what directv gets you get. The stations that send the programming are in control of what they send as true HD. In other words if they send lemons DTV is not attempting to make lemonade they broadcast the lemons.
My point is that they are not attempting to mislead anyone, the guide has been kind of buggy.

Some of the new stations, like Animal Planet, TLC and others are zooming the sd material, but not enough to fill the sides, then they crop the top and bottom. Actually, it's a good solution as long as they don't crop too much.

 

[charper1]

This is in another thread too; seems the aspect ratio topic needs a sticky thread here so people can read up. In fact a thread on OAR, and when this are or are not HD, stretched, cropped, would be decent reading. I am not sure why we still assume that a "HD channel" means we think 110% of the programming they air is HD or 16:9 for that matter A lot of HD is NOT 16:9 (there are other aspect ratios) and a good bit of a channel's content is not even HD.