HDTV picture size on standard 4:3 TV

[Jeffhs]

When and if my flat screen TV dies (it is close to the end of its 2-year warranty), I intend to replace it with my RCA CTC-185 19" NTSC table-model TV. I've tried connecting my cable (without using a box) to the latter TV; it works, but the picture on one channel (and one channel only) does not fill the screen vertically. I don't want to use a cable box with this set if I can avoid it. The cable company in my area (Time Warner) is no help. I was on the phone with one of their customer service representatives for quite some time discussing this issue, but was given no concrete solution to the problem, except to use a cable box.

Is HDTV (the ATSC television standard) designed this way, that is, the picture on a standard 4:3 analog TV will not fill the screen without a box, and if not, why am I only seeing this on one channel, rather than on every DTV channel on the cable? I think this may be one way the cable companies have of getting their customers to buy flat-screen sets, with their hope being that, eventually, every single CRT TV in this country, with no exceptions, will disappear from American living rooms, and even then the cable operators force us to use cable boxes to get anything above the expanded basic tier of service. I do not watch most of the stations my cable offers on x-basic, preferring to buy DVDs of older shows from online stores such as Amazon.com or rent them from Netflix.

Thank heaven DVD players have not yet become obsolete in this age of DTV. I bought an LG Blu-ray player (with wired Internet connectivity I do not presently use) to replace my standard DVD player a couple of years ago; I'm glad I did. I'm to the point now where I often watch my DVDs more than I watch broadcast TV (except the retro-TV channels; my cable carries three such channels -- MeTV, Antenna TV and a local station that carries RetroTV, formerly RTV).