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Box Not Pillarboxing 4:3
As per the thread title. No matter what output setting i use on the box for HDMI, all 4:3 content is automatically stretched to fill the 16:9 frame.
Is this a fundamental problem with the box? Because my FreesatHD box and PS3 can manage it perfectly fine.
Is this a fundamental problem with the box? Because my FreesatHD box and PS3 can manage it perfectly fine.
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If you set the box output to Auto it will automatically switch to 576 for SD channels and allow your TV to do its thing. There is, depending on your set, an irritating delay while it switches resolution. Also you will find the EPG looks a lot worse at 576p. And, on my setup at least, the PQ is actually better at 1080i.
So, personally, I find the easiest solution is to have the box set to 1080i and flick to RGB scart input for the odd bit of 4:3 I watch these days.
A lot of tv's rather stupidly won't allow this when viewing a 1080 input as they wrongly assume that all 1080 sources must be HD and therefore must be 16:9
The big failing here is that the sky box does not INTERNALLY pillar box 4:3 material, in the same way it can internally letterbox 16:9 material if you are viewing on a 4:3 tv. If it did that (which I suspect is what the freesat box and PS3 are doing) then whether or not the tv would switch aspect ratio would be irrelevant.
If you set your box to AUTO, you should then be able to change the screen size using the TVs control.
Some TVs will auto-switch, but not all. Not ideal, but works in most cases.
But I agree, the Sky+HD box should have a setting that enables pillar boxing of 4:3 content. I think it used to do it as standard, but some people were complaining that the picture didn't fill the screen so Sky changed it.
Really? At 1080i? The only AR controls on my Sony for that output are Zoom and Smart designed to crop and stretch material that is letterboxed and pillarboxed respsectively.
I can't see how the TV can recognise it is seeing 4:3 material if the box has already stretched it
Certainly my Panny plasma lets you switch 1080i HDMI to 4:3.
The TV can't recognise it is native 4:3 because the HDMI specifiers in their "wisdom" decided HD resolutions would all be 16:9 aspect (big mistake imho) so there is no aspect information in 1080i/720p signals. However the TV can certainly be manually switched to 4:3 if the TV designers allow this.
I've had a Sky HD box since launch four years ago, and I have never seen this facility on it.
It's never produced either widescreen switching for the TV, or internal pillarboxing of 4:3 material, when locked in 1080 or 720 output mode. In "automatic" output mode also it's always worked exactly the same way that it does now.
I can indeed manually switch the TV to 4:3 mode when Auto Output is selected.
However, it's still a bit of a ball ache having to do it everytime i change to a programme that i **think** is 4:3 content when all my other devices allow it.
When works now in automatic mode also worked in 720 and 1080 mode.
Really, the Sky box should add the black bars to the left and right of the picture when the source is 4:3 - every other HDMI device I have does this including the Freesat and VirginMedia boxes.
Are you saying that if the box was set to output 1080i it would output a widescreen switching signal so that 4:3 transmissions on SD channels were displayed in 4:3 and widescreen SD and HD transmissions were displayed in 16:9, assuming that the TV supported automatic widescreen switching over HDMI?
If that is so it must have been extremely early on that it was changed, as I don't remember anything other than the 1080i output being always flagged as 16:9, which is actually correct as per the HD specifications, and as it is now.
It's not correct.
Sky+ is the only HD device that is incapable of offering viewers the choice of watching 4:3 material as intended while still upscaling the material to 1080i.
The V+ does it and Bluray players and the PS3 can all upscale to1080p and give you the choice to view 4:3 distorted into widescreen or as 4:3.
The Sky box only does it correctly if you leave the box on auto which not only means a picture glitch as it changes from sd to hd each time but also forces the tv to upscale which does not always give best results
Didn't I just say that?
To not transmit a widescreen flag on an HD signal would therefore be non-standard, which is why the 1080i output of any box should always be flagged as 16:9.
This switches the TV to widescreen, which is correct, but shows 4:3 SD transmissions which have been upscaled by the box in the wrong shape.
With some TVs you can manually correct this if you wish, but some will not allow any aspect switching on HD signals.
What the box should do in this case is still send a widescreen HD signal to the TV, but it should itself internally pillarbox the 4:3 frame into the 16:9 frame, with black borders at the sides.
This is what broadcasters should do at source when they are transmitting 4:3 programmes on HD channels (usually upscaled of course). Most of them now do.
Unfortunately this annoys people who want their whole screen filled, even if it means a distorted image!
The Sky HD boxes have never done this, although others do. It should be a switchable option. The box is perfectly capable of doing it, it has just never been implemented for some reason Sky only know!
I remember that. It was great...
Apparently some TVs got screwed up by it so instead of making it a toggle they removed the facility altogether.
Auto works well enough I guess.
The reason being they will have not received enough complaints to spur them into doing something
At least there is a way round this one - put up with Auto or watch 4:3 via scart. My biggest gripe is the way Sky Sports HD are continuing to actually broadcast 4:3 material stretched instead of pillarboxed. Unless your TV is one of the few that seem to be able to squash an already stretched image, this gives you no choice at all if you want to watch an undistorted picture other than to change to SD equivalent channel and lose the benefit of upscaling :mad:.
I suppose too Sky are relying on the amount of 4:3 sports broadcasts continuing to dwindle. Just in this last year or so broadcasts from around the world seem to have become available at least in 16:9 if not in HD for just about everything - except for the Indian sub-continent who seem to be sticking resolutely to their 4:3 guns