Finally found a good way to remove letterbox...
 

I searched the heck out of trying to find a way to adjust the HD format so that we can remove the annoying black strips at the top and bottom of our screens, for those that are afflicted, and I think I've found the solution.

Boom.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/151317992249...84.m1423.l2649

I'd buy it myself, but not many of my channels are affected. Yet. But if you look at the lower right corner of the box, it has a method of compressing and expanding width and height right at the source.

I think that is actually a scene change control...It would mix two video sources and on scene change there would be a horizontal or vertical transition between scenes that the controls would control.

This is a special effects unit, and the functions on the lower right are for different kinds of wipes between two sources. Does not do resizing.

By the way, I don't understand why you are still having trouble. What exactly is the source of video you are using? A cable box? satellite box? Off-air digital to analog converter box? Any of these should have a zoom/aspect/crop setting that enlarges the image and crops off the left and right edges of a 16x9 program to give you full-screen 4x3 NTSC out.

As I said above, it's not a problem for me....but I know that it is for some.

Oh - thought "those afflicted" included you. Just trying to help.
If someone does have a problem, they should post a description of their setup and someone here should be able to walk them through a fix.

Yes..... I watch TV in standard def and I cant stand that garbage!!!!


I can understand why you dont really wanna buy it w/o knowing 100% if it works for that price......

It's my fault, I should have been more clear....but I'm certainly glad I asked the question :)

Most equipment I have, cable box, bluray player, can adjust to pan and scan and basically zoom in on the image a little.

I think most flat screen TVs can be set to display full-screen, even during commercials. It just takes a bit of fiddling with the zoom adjustment. My flat Insignia 19" set has a menu option in, I believe, the main setup menu labeled "auto zoom"; when this is switched on and the image zoomed in (using the zoom button on the remote) to fill the screen, the picture will do so on everything, including commercials.

With Blu-ray players, as VK member lnx64 noted, there is usually an option to set the aspect ratio for either 4:3 or 16:9, which will cause the image to fill the screen with no distortion. The auto-zoom function (and the zoom button itself) on TVs so equipped, however, will do so by expanding the picture so that part of it will be off the screen. However, since most major network programming is now 16:9 HD and most viewers (except VK's antique TV collectors) have ditched their old CRT 4:3 sets and now have flat screens, the auto-zoom/zoom features have little use except for cable channels that still show some programming in 4:3 SD. USA network does this with Law and Order and possibly other shows filmed in this format.

Letterbox bulls**t.. yes indeed, ANNOYING!!!! I spent my youth looking at test patterns and adjusting my sets to as near perfect linearity as I could (yeah, the pattern's linearity varied from station to station... go figure, but that's another story...) and NOW all I see is fat short people and size changes as the camera pans from side to side....!!!! I explain to people that they can eliminate that by simply adjusting the aspect ratio, but the comments are always the same... "I can't stand to have the heads cut off!!!" Personally, I'll lose the tops of heads momentarily to lose the dam cockamayme letterbox...!!! What say thee??

I think part of the problem is broadcasters/cable companies/someone somewhere in the chain incorrectly tagging older 4:3 content as 16:9. Then you end up stretched,squashed, letterboxed, pillarboxed, etc depending on your device and settings.

When I last had cable I had the standard Pace STB connected via SCART cable to various 4:3 and 16:9 CRT TVs I've had over time. When the content was correctly flagged as either 4:3 or 16:9 it would automatically switch the TV to the correct aspect ratio.

At some point they started flagging everything as 16:9 and I had to disable the auto switching. For a while I was switching it manually depending on the channel/show. In the end I got sick of and set it to 14:9 for everything as a compromise.

Kamakiri, what is an RCA model PR-21 stereo console what do they look like , what year are they , I've had a number of RCA Stereo consoles like the one in picture (wide and low like Frank Lloyd Wright inspiration)

This thing is a rudimentary processor from the early 90's. I don't even see where it can mix between sources. It looks like it only copies A-B or B-A. The "Picture Effector" just takes the A or B source to black, blue, yellow, etc on the color selector or whatever else it can do on A or B. The size controls only size inwards from whatever the source is...4x3 in its day. A letterbox would only get new letterbox stripes.

tI may have a VHS camera connector on the back we cannot see if you want to power an old camera. There is a button for "camera-A/B".

As Dave A said, that device looks like a variation on the ones that Panasonic made in the late 1980s or early 1990s, such as the WJ-MX10 and others; basic video effects generators with some ability to do A/B wipes and audio mixing of a couple of signal sources. I use one in my ham radio "amateur television" (ATV) station here, for fun. No, they would not do anything related to zooming or changing the aspect ratio of video signals.

Now to comment on the idea of "removing letterboxing" at all: I find that whole idea to be lousy.

There is nothing worse than mutilating the original composition of a movie (or even a wide-screen TV show) and chopping out parts from the sides, just so "the whole TV screen is lit up with a picture".

Chopping up movies and TV shows to make them all appear the same size (whether on 4:3 screens that we all collect, or on 16:9 wide-screen sets when watching old TV shows or pre-1953 movies) is no better than cutting off the head on the Mona Lisa because "its frame is taller than the picture next to it". Would you really want EVERY picture in an art museum to be the same size and shape? Movies and TV shows are no different; they exist in a number of widths (or heights) and aspect ratios.

There are plenty of TV channels and DVDs with 4:3 shows that can be watched "full screen" on our old sets very nicely.