Hey All! Waddup?

Ok, so I've got a 42" HDTV, and for some reason, the widescreen mode isn't filling up the whole screen. Like, there's black edges on sometimes the top and bottom, other times the sides. Now, I can use a "wide zoom" mode and get it to fill up the screen, but the image gets very distorted.

It's very frusterating. I go to places like Best Buy and take a look at their 42" HDTVs, and they all have pictures filling the screen without any distortion. I want that. Bad. And YES I am setting games and DVDs to "widescreen" mode. Nothing seems to work.

The reason I'm so concerned is because I'm considering getting an Xbox, but I want to play the widescreen games right.

Thanks for any help. For those of you that actually read through this long, boring post, have a cookie

Why not go to Best Buy and ask if they'd ever had that problem? That's what I'd do...

It's not an uncommon problem, it's really all to do with aspect ratios etc... by the sound of it. You've undoubtably got several settings, which include things like widescreen, zoom, auto resize, 4:3, 16:9 that sort of thing. Generally the auto resize does tend to be stupid, rather than zooming in you may find the picture streched, or bizarely cropped as you describe. Do you have your TV setup on a "permanent" setting for instance widescreen or on the auto resize thing? What is the make of your TV?

To Dohnutt - THat's a very good idea I haven't thought of before *slaps himself*. I'll do that ASAP

To Carbine - Ok, so it's a Sony Grand WEGA LCD projection HDTV. The modes of manual zoom are normal, wide, wide zoom, and full, all of which are just clever ways at distorting a 4:3 picture, so I don't use them. When widescreen stuff is playing on the screen, it's uses a 16:9 mode, but it's reaallly small. And when I try to zoom, it just distorts. Most likely I'll go to Best Buy and complain. That solves everything I actually haven't found a permenent mode of zoom yet, just a default, which is normal.

First off, they are not all fancy ways of distorting a 4:3 picture- "Full" or "Zoom1" depending on your TV, will correctly upscale a widescreen image to the size of your TV. Many widescreen games, movies, and TV shows are presented in an anamorphic widescreen mode, meaning that the picture is rendered/shot in a 'squished' 4:3 format, which is then projected as a wide image with everything the correct size. Second, if you're experiencing black bars while watching movies, it means the film your are watching was filmed in a not-quite 16x9 ratio, which is very common. What you are seeing is the original filmstrip the way it was intended to be viewed.

Secondly, what kind of cables are you using? If you're using standard composite AV cables, then it's time for an upgrade. Composite carries a maximum of 480i via three channels- aka fugly. You need to get yourself some Component, VGA, or HDMI cables- high definition cables capable of carrying higher resolution (up to 1080p) and all around nicer looking pictures in progressive-scan modes. I recommend HDMI cables for a Sony Wega, but VGA or Component would look fantastic as well.

Oh, and just as a reference:

HDMI>VGA>Component>S-video>Composite>RCA>RFU