Record HD Shows without Grey Bars.?

Question

I have a Scientific Atlanta Exploer8300HD DVR Box from Time Warner. What Im trying to do is record an HD show from my DVR to my DVD Recorder (I know it wont be HD VQ) When I do this I get grey bars on the top and bottom of the screen. How do I get rid of this so its full screen? Anyhelp would be great. Thanks.

Answer 1

Have you tried resetting the aspect ratio on the cable box? I have Time Warner, but with the Pioneer cable box. But, if you go into the Settings menu (push the Settings button on the remote), look for the Aspect Ratio selector. If you can't find it and there is a More Settings selection in the menu, try there. You should then be able to play around with different aspect ratio settings to get the picture you want.

Of course, if you're playing the recorded DVD on a standard 4:3 aspect ratio screen, you're always going to get the gray bars. This is because the aspect ratio of an HD picture is 16:9 (widescreen) and the only way they can show the widescreen picture on a standard screen is in letterbox format (with the gray bars on the top and bottom).