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.

Yay Chris. 16x9 letterbox is put out there to show the original intent of the director using a wide screen and most channels now honor that. And I speak as a tv director. Just watch Laurence of Arabia in 4x3 to see how the wide-screen vision of a director is squashed.

If you have to have the CRT filling version in 4x3, the best bet...and cheapest, is to find a VHS/LD copy of the film from the 80's in 4x3. Also known as "center-cut" or "pan-and-scan". Besides, this version gets you in to another form of tv history preservation.

I hate letterbox!!!!

FULL SCREEN for me :)

I don't "hate" letterbox, but I don't like it, either. Fortunately, my flat screen TV has the zoom feature that allows me to fill out the screen when watching channels, such as USA network, that carry much of their programming in letterbox format. I don't have this problem with the local network stations, whose digital feeds always fill my screen. With my Blu-ray player, there is a menu option to switch between 4:3 and 16:9. I set it for 16:9 and it works perfectly with most DVDs--my own and those I rent from Netflix.

I have nothing against letterboxing but I hate it when You Tubers stretch the daylights out of a classic TV shows do it.I watched some of I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners that were stretched to kingdom come.

Its great for movies of any era.

Some computer video editing software can crop out the letterbox and fix the video back to normal.

I know my DVD player has options that can have letterbox or 4.3 to be selected.And the same for the cable box and the DTV converter as I can remember.

I still have this problem with an RCA DTV converter box. Apparently the mfgr. assumes that anyone buying this device will be using it to feed a 4X3 TV set,
BECAUSE there are only two display selections, FULLSCREEN and WIDESCREEN, and they both produce black bars on any 16:9 set I've connected it to. Works fine on a 4X3 set however. Remember, never assume...

I still have this problem with an RCA DTV converter box. Apparently the mfgr. assumes that anyone buying this device will be using it to feed a 4X3 TV set,
BECAUSE there are only two display selections, FULLSCREEN and WIDESCREEN, and they both produce black bars on any 16:9 set I've connected it to. Works fine on a 4X3 set however. Remember, never assume...

4X3 content on a 16X9 screen produces black bars at the sides, and is called 'Pillarbox'.

[QUOTE=cbenham;3125781]I still have this problem with an RCA DTV converter box. Apparently the mfgr. assumes that anyone buying this device will be using it to feed a 4X3 TV set/QUOTE]
If it is one of the inexpensive "coupon-eligible"-type tuners with only RF and RCA-composite outputs, this is not surprising. 16:9 standard-definition sets were seldom if ever sold in the USA, and those set-top tuners were made to be very basic devices for common TV sets.

The cure is to find a set-top ATSC tuner that has HD outputs, even if you do not use them. Tuners like that (such as the Hughes HTL-HD) will often have a menu setting for 16:9, or will put out a widescreen signal on the composite output if the component or DVI/HDMI/RGB output is set to 720p or 1080i mode.

I just don't see a problem. I definitely want letterbox so I can see the entire movie as the Director intended me to see it, to cite Dave's example of Lawrance of Arabia. The only way one could view Lawarance of Arabia without letterbox is if one purchased a 21x9 aspect ratio monitor/TV.

On "old" 4x3 TV's, ME TV will look okay, but today's 16x9 telecasts will be cut off (missing part of the image) unless one sets the TV to letterbox.

I do understand the undersiable look of watching letterbox on a 4x3 set and the possible burn in on CRT sets. Just reset the aspect ratio on the converter box, but understand you won't see the entire image.

Before the DVD and BluRay was invented, the state of the art was LaserDisk championed by Pioneer. That format gave us the best image and sound with rock steady freeze frame. We demanded letterbox on our LaserDisks because of the expense of the disks and we began watching on projection television. The movie studios complied, there was a big demand for letterbox LaserDisks.

I understand and like letterbox on programs and movies that were meant to have it, but what ticks me off is when a 4X3 program is pillar boxed at the network (I know this because the pillar box is filled with the network art) then sent to the cable co as 16X9 by the network, and then that image gets pillar boxed to give me a 4X3 content with a big rectangle around it effectively decreasing my screen size.

I can't do a damn thing about it since it is analog cable (short of breaking in to buildings, or writing complaints).

Also some DTV stations send signals to block aspect ratio changes at the converter box.

Watching Lawrence of Arabia on a 21" Sony Trinitron was my first experience with letterbox. That movie is a great example of why in my opinion watching a movie on any sort of TV is nothing but a giant compromise... movies are simply not made to be watched on a tiny screen across the room. You miss details left right and centre, and the sound is totally inadequate too.

I have A 120" wall mounted 16x9 screen with a 3 CRT Runco HDTV projector mounted on the ceiling, and the amount of detail I notice in movies has increased exponentially over watching movies on TV sets. It has been a bit of a bitch to keep it alive, the convergence ICs have failed twice, but since installing an additional fan they seem to be hanging in there.