Edit: madlabs I wrote this post on and off over a few hours last night and today and forgot who I was responding to...I assumed a less knowledge in writing this than I would have if I had remembered you were asking the original question. Whether that's good or bad I'll let you decide.
How well do you understand aspect ratio and the different ways of displaying it in other ratios?
When you display a 16x9 source on a 4x3 screen there's innescapable tradeoffs to do it. You can either letterbox the content (which let's you see the entire source image with correct geometry but there will be black bars above and below), you can 'pan-and-scan' crop the center 4x3 out of the film (many VHS film releases did this, geometry is maintained and there are no bars on screen, but you can't see stuff near the edges of 16x9 programs because it gets cut off), or you can horizontally compress the image (no black bars and you can see the whole source image, but noticable geometric distortion which will make round things like clocks into tall ovals and make people wierdly skinny)....
So you have to choose whether you want to letterbox, crop, or squeeze the image.
Knowing exact equipment you plan to use to stream the content, the 4x3 display you want to watch it on and the inputs and outputs of both helps...it is possible the equipment you have is improperly set up. A new program filmed and recorded in 16x9* should never have black bars on the sides when displayed on a 4x3 TV...if it does the player and or any signal converters between it and the TV are incorrectly configured or badly designed.
*Some 4x3 content got converted to 16x9 by pillarboxing it (take a 4x3 source and stick black bars on the sides so it fits into a 16x9 frame)...if you take such a fake 16X9 video and convert back to 4x3 the pillar boxing may remain and have letterbox added to it putting a black ball around the image...some DTV and cable stations here (especially a few years ago) would sometimes screw up and do this wrong 2-3 consecutive times on commercials and you'd end up with a 7" image with a black border on a 19" TV.
I have a 1.5 year old desktop I built myself from all new parts except the graphics card...The graphics card is a ~10-15 year old PCIe x16 graphics card with a S-video output (S-video is 4x3 and adapts to composite with a 1$ connector adapter...I use this to drive 4x3 aspect ratio CRT TVs. The system runs windows 10 and while win 10 will balk about the old graphics card it will find a generic driver for it that will work (windows 7 supports older graphics cards better but there are potential security issues if you use the computer for things other than video streaming). I wanted to drive an HD monitor off HDMI at the same time so I went into the BIOS and configured my machine so that the onboard HDMI port on the mother board and the graphics card are both simultaneously active. You probably will have to learn and play with the menus in in windows by right clicking and opening 'display settings' in windows...some important things are burried in some cases. I prefer to use VLC media player (which can also play streaming content) for everything because I can change aspect ratio, crop and zoom in VLC to make video to conform to any of the standard rescaling methods (and a few non-standard ones).
That works for a desktop and displaying the video correctly on only one monitor at a time...If I want to display the same video on both my 4x3 and 16x9 monitors at once then one won't look right... For my laptop and my friends laptop and any other HDMI source I use the following chain: (there is a thread here on videokarma describing this and giving links to purchase with a title about removing letterbox, read it before trying to buy any of this) HDMI from laptop (or other media player) to an HDMI-to-composite AV * adapter box the composite output goes to an Exitron video scaler (which has horizontal and vertical size and centering controls which allow you to shrink and stretch either axis to achieve any standard aspect ratio scaling) the VGA output goes to a VGA to composite/S-video converter and you plug the composite or S-video from it (and the audio from the HDMITOAV converter) into your TV...
The VGA to composite converter has image scaling capability similar to the Exitron so if your computer or other streaming device has VGA output you could potentially use JUST the VGA to composite converter...also if you use the full system and the Exitron does not have enough control range the VGA to composite converter may be able to extend that where you need...
The problem with aspect ratio conversion is broadcast equipment is expensive and somewhat complicated, consumer gear often does not give you a choice which method to use, does a poor job of doing what it does, and or in the case of my system is a bit cumbersome to configure.
*Note if you are splitting the HDMI to drive both the adapter box and a HDTV some adapter boxes will only accept 480 or 720 and will force the source to run in that mode so the HDTV won't have a 1080 feed...to get around that I feed the HDMI splitter output to the input of my 'HDML cloner box' (it is a media recorder player recorder I use to record and play back HD material from the HDMI output of my cable box, VWestlife on YouTube did a review of the HDML cloner box) then take the HDMI output of the cloner box and feed that to the HDMI to AV converter...this scheme ensures any HDMI source will display in proper HD on my HDTV and simultaneously display in proper 4x3 standard def on my old standard def CRT sets. This bit of the equation I just figured out last night (I had been putting it off).
Why would I want to watch the same video on a new HDTV AND a 1954 vintage RCA 21CT55 (the final version of RCAs first color TV chassis) at the same time....well because I'm a weirdo and a colossal vintage TV nerd and much of what I watch is newer shows.
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Originally Posted by madlabs
EDIT: Did some looking at Roku and it seems that they are used with a TV. I am just using a laptop to stream content to my TV. So the Roku will not work for me?
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The Roku connects to the internet and plays the stream it's self without need for a laptop... granted the older models with analog output have lost software support for a lot of features so exactly what you can play I don't know (I have one I need to try out one day, it's been catching dust since I got it used for 1$).
One easy option to have correct aspect ratio on an old 4x3 TV is to get a VCR, LD player and or DVD player and a collection of tapes and discs and just watch vintage material on it.
I've got every vintage format imaginable hooked up (from 70's EIAJ and UMATIC, Betamax videotape CED/selectavision, LD, HDDVD, and more common formats like VHS, DVD and Bluray in addition to the new devices...my big equipment rack is neat and full but the spaghetti monster in back is epic...I need 3 power strips just to feed it all.
