OT tv question

cb

Member
we just got a flatscreen tv, after the old one went bad..samsung hdtv, i think i know the answer, but not sure.. the manual is coming, it was left out of package. question.. on some channels and some programs there is a black strip about 2 in across the bottom and top of the screen. is this bcause these are not hd. thankks and have a nice day
 
think it is format of some of them, you may be able to change it some, but there are movies,etc that will have band visible... not visible on smaller , old tvs
 
cb,

Although I don't have any external connection to it (no cable, no antenna, etc.), I do have a flat-screen TV that I use to watch DVDs. On the remote that controls the TV, there is an inscrutible icon that attempts to portray the fact that the TV's screen can be set to about four different modes.

There is "wide", "cinema", "side bar", and "full". Depending on the screen mode, I have black bars on the side or top of the screen.
I virtually always use the "cinema" mode.

You might see if changing the screen mode might help.

Good luck,

Tom in TN
 
cb:

Your TV is set for "wide screen". Go into your setup menu, go to Display, change to "Full Screen". That should eliminate the black bars on the top & bottom of your screen.
 
thanks for the quick responce and the good info.. it seems there are people on this site that knows something about everything. have a great day
 
as with most modern things - the answer is "it depends".

Pretty much all movies from the beginning of time were filmed in a "wide screen" format.

And all television broadcasts were done in the normal tv screen format.

On the older televisions, movies were almost always cut off on the sides to fit the odd shaped tv screen.

You just lost the edges.

Some older recordings of movies - instead of cutting anything off - they shrank the entire picture to fit the standard television screen so you can see the full image.

Of course, this left open areas at the top and bottom (the black bars)- so you could get the entire movie image.

That was what they used to call "letter box" due to it's shape - like looking through a mail slot.

now that our tv screens match the movie screens more accurately - there's no need to cut movie images off - but many broadcast stations still have to broadcast to "normal" TV's - so you end up getting a messy mix of options.

Your tv will have some sort of "aspect" button that can try to adjust for them on an as needed basis. On the Samsung I think it's "p.size"

You might want full width movies to take up your full screen - but if you watch a regular broadcast show like this - it'll be stretched out to fit. You want to go down to that mode so it looks normal (but you'll have black bars on the SIDES of the image). OR you can just zoom in on that image and it'll expand to fit the full screen, but you'll lose the top and bottom portions of the image.

-

it all makes sense once you play around with it for a while.

Every source will be different - just cycle through all the modes for every program and you'll get it.

Samsung makes a great tv - so if you're having any trouble, it's YOU not the tv. : )

- and to further confuse matters - many cable boxes have a similar function to alter the image size/aspect ratio before it gets to the tv - so be aware of that too.
 
You can go to www.samsung.com/us and search for the on-line manual for your TV. It should be the same as the hard copy, you can download a copy there if you want.
 
well i'll heap praise on mr sutton's explanation, as well as the other responces..it seems i may be able do a little improvement, but i may have to live with some of it. the longer i look at it, it seems not as big a problem as at first..thanks to all
 
Many manufacturers have opted to only put a simple setup guide in the box. For the full instruction manual you have to go online. Not sure if that is the case with your Samsung but their website will certainly have a manual.
 

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