Why does my LCD HDTV have black bars on the left and right sides of the screen?

Question

I have a 32'' widescreen audiovox LCD HDTV. I also own a comcast digital cable box, which we used to view hi-def programs through component cables. We recently got a dvi cable and now sandard-def programs have black bars on the left and right of the screen. Th HD is fine,no black bars. But standard-def channels now have black bars on the left and right, but they did not before when we used component cables. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

u r not viewing hd channels. only hd programing will take up the whole screen on an hdtv.

Answer 2

it's because you have a widescreen and those channels must not be available in widescreen.. so the black bars are filling in the space. you also may be able to change that on some sort of setting.

Answer 3

when you are on hd channels you must set your tv to hd and on regular tv you set it to tv the buttons should be on your remote

Answer 4

Widescreen TV's are wider than standard def TV's.  You have space left over on each side when you put the shape of a standard def program on the screen.  You can always stretch or zoom, but that's your preference.  I would keep it as it is and see the original content the way it was meant to be viewed.

Standard-def channels have a 4:3 aspect ratio; the width is 4/3 = 1.333 times longer than the height.

High-def channels have a 16:9 aspect ratio; the width is 16/9 = 1.78 times longer than the height.

If you take a standard def image (1.33:1) and put it in a widescreen set as large as it will fit, you will have black bars on the left and right.

It used to be that all programs (movies and television) had a 4:3 apsect ratio.  When television was introduced, the theatres had to have something novel to draw audiences back to the theatre.  They switched to even larger aspect rations of 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 (width is 2.35 times longer than the height).  Early movies like "Gone with the Wind" the original "Dracula" and even "The Wizard of Oz" were all 1.33:1 and would fit perfectly on standard def screens.

Since a lot of movies have even wider screens than HDTV's, you are going to even run into black bars on the top and bottom.

16:9 (1.78:1) is basically a compromise between standard def (1.33:1) and theater (2.35:1).