Why does my tv have a black boarder around it?

Question

yesterday i noticed that my tvs both different brands had a black boarder around the picture. This has happened all by it's self can anyone tell me has this happened to their tv and was there some sort of change coming into effect that i didn't know about? I had a look at my friends tv and hers is doing the same thing we tried to fix it but nothing can someone help me please i don't know how much longer i can watch days in alittle box.

Answer 1

It's difficult to say since you didn't say if your TV is HD or not, or what you were watching on the TV, or if you were watching a DVD versus cable/satellite, or even if the black borders are on the left/right or top/bottom.

Answer 2

This is a really big problem caused by having to operate in both the old analog and the new digital world.  Broadcasters and cable companies will be fighting this for a while.

First let me define a few things:

LETTERBOX: this is when a wide (HD) picture is shrunk to fit onto a square (analog) screen.  There will be black bars at the top and bottom.

PILLARBOX: This is when a square (analog) picture is shown on a rectangular screen.  There will be black bars on the sides.

CENTER CUT: This is when the square in the center of a HD picture is shown and the sides are cut off.  Square (analog) pictures are normal.

POSTAGE STAMP: This is when there is a black border around the entire picture.

What you are describing is the dreaded Postage Stamp.  It's caused by too many "conversions".  When a program originator (TV Station or Network) converts to digital within the station, everything must be digital.  So, they broadcast in HD (wide screen) and must digitize and Pillar Box any non HD material they may have (and there is still a lot).  So, what a HD set user sees is HD programming with pillar boxed stuff mixed in.

For cable companies to provide digital signals for analog sets or for analog sets with converter boxes, the signal must be either letterboxed or center cut.  If it is center cut, then the sides of the HD signal are lost but there are no black bars.  If the cable company chooses to letterbox the signal, then any square pictures will become the dreaded Postage Stamp.  The two bars on the sides are from the pillar box the TV station must use and the bars on the top and bottom are from the letterbox the cable system / converter box is using.

Probably what happened is your cable system switched over to the station's digital signal (because the analog ones are going away) and they are letterboxing it for analog viewers.

I hope this helps. Please return and select a Best Answer from all of those submitted.