watching YouView on an old CRT telly - problem with aspect ratio
Sally Jacobs
Member Posts: 17
I have just had a TalkTalk youview box installed on my old CRT telly which has an aspect ratio of 4:3. Using my old tiscali TV box and my old freeview box, the TV automatically adjusted the aspect ratio of all programmes to allow viewing of 16:9 programmes without distortion. Now they all appear squashed in at the sides to fit the screen. Any ideas on how to fix this porblem. I would prefer the letterbox effect to this!
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Does your TV's menu include an option to set how content should be displayed ?
I cant find my user manual but I've found one online for a similar model and still can't see where the option is to adjust picture size.
Like I say, in the past with other digital viewers it has always adjusted automatically and it is still adjusting properly for DVDs.
I have tried changing the scart lead too.
This seems to be the manual for your TV - not had a chance to read thought it yet though:
http://www.tradenet.sharp.co.uk/files...
Any ideas?
thanks
But at a guess, you're experiencing what Sally is experiencing - that the YV box renders 4:3 transmissions as 12:9 inside 16:9, with black bars either side.
But on your widescreen TV, you at least see the picture displayed in its correct proportions, with car wheels appearing round, like they are in real life.
Though you are possibly pining for the stretched version that gets rid of the black bars, but makes car wheels look like flattened ovals.
However, Sally sees that 16:9 screen compressed into her 4:3 CRT screen, so even 4:3 is all squashed up into a 3:3 picture with a 0.5:3 black bar each side. Her car wheels are tall ovals, which makes for a slightly uncomfortable ride :-(
This 13 year old TV won't have digital, so I guess the YV box was intended to provide this. There is a fix, I think, but it depends on what else you plug into it, and how that can be adjusted, e.g. Video recorder or DVD player.
On the back of your TV, you should find some little undocumented holes into which a plastic screwdriver can be inserted to adjust the picture size and position. One of these, if you are lucky, will be height; and if you are very lucky, it will have enough adjustment to narrow the YV picture enough, top to bottom, to put the aspect ratio right.
However, it may mean that the picture is no longer shown properly from a video recorder or a DVD player, if you regularly use one of these with the TV. Fine if you don't; but a tough choice if you do.
It also means that a 4:3 picture will have black all round it, and be fair bit smaller than your screen.
A couple of things; make sure you use a plastic screwdriver, not even an insulated metal one. Maplins stock them, or did, for this sort of use. If you aren't confident, you may need a TV engineer to do it; and you certainly will if the set can have those adjustments, but only with the back off, as there are some lethal voltages inside a CRT TV.
But it's a lot of trouble, and possibly expense, on a set that ought to be rather past its useful life, and would be so, even if not for digital channels and 16:9. Perhaps you haven't used it much? But I'd expect the picture to be going soft by now, if it's the original tube. Does it still have the contrast it should?
Nice though it may be, you could buy it a £20 digibox, which will give you the 'pan and scan' 4:3 from today's 16:9 programmes that the YV boxes lack, and retire it to second room duties. And then treat yourself to a 2012 LCD set, with widescreen and all sorts of goodies, which will really let the YV box show you what it can do, over that tempting HDMI lead in the box. Because no matter how you tweak that old Sharp, it can't show HD, and even HD channels come out no better than SD on it. My 32in Samsung takes up less space than my last [1] CRT set, a 24in Sony. And it's got 3D, which the BBC now sometimes broadcasts (e.g. The Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, and some Wimbledon. Hmmm. Wonder if the YV box could have recorded these? I don't see why not....)
[1] Nearly last, anyway. I've still got a Philippe Starck designed set I'm saving for posterity, but that's in storage... :-)
FYI the TV still works very well. It has great picture and sound quality. And I do not have teh money to buy a new one.
I have a digi box that works well with it but doesn't have pause, rewind, catch up etc. It has always adjusted automatically in the past to whatever size transmission it gets. I don't understand why the YouView box is set up in such a way that the same thing can't happen.
Which I know might not be much comfort to you...
But certainly, unless your TV has HDMI inputs and is at least HD Ready, if not actually Full HD, you will not be able to realise the full potential of YouView on it.
[Edited]
But in these fraught times, I've removed the analogy that Jon might have taken exception to.
Jon, if you took exception to anything else I said, please say so, and I will try to expand on my reasoning further.
I think not being rude is a knife that cuts both ways, isn't it?
But see Piers definitive reply below - there is no constructive response you can be given, alas, except perhaps the one I gave you in the other thread you posted in on this topic, assuming that (a) your CRT TV has a 16:9 mode and (b) you don't mind watching letter-boxed.
But I thought you might prefer a response, even if it wasn't what you wanted to hear, to an apparent deathly silence on the matter.
While few people here still have a CRT set, there are certainly a number who would like the YouView box to pass 4:3 transmissions through in 4:3, whereas it currently only ever outputs 16:9, and puts 4:3 in the middle 12:9 of 16:9, to preserve the aspect ratio.
i.e. it doesn't even do 4:3, let alone recode 16:9 to 4:3.
The set-top boxes, DVD players and the like that offer options to present 16:9 on 4:3 - pan & scan, letterboxed and so on, and which pass through 4:3 unchanged, were perhaps an interim solution for an environment where 4:3 CRT was still widespread, and the change to 16:9 digital technology was only just gaining traction.
But YouView, which is an example of the latest technology, have chosen not to offer this legacy support; maybe to simplify things, more likely to be able to cram in more features that are relevant to digital.
I'm even kind of surprised that it offers a SCART socket, though this does at least mean that it can include those sets without HDMI that can render 16:9 correctly.
Which, hopefully, yours will turn out to be, if you do decide to keep the box.
I think we have established, since the above 3 year old discussions, that the YouView box is going against the recommendations in the D-Book that the box, passing through a 4:3 signal, should encode it such that a receiver can determine it was transmitted 4:3, and allow the user the option to expand it to 16:9 if he/she wants - what we call Stretchyvision.
However, the box recodes the signal so that it looks as if it was actually broadcast in 16:9 with 2:9 black bands either side of a 4:3 (12:9) picture. And few if any TVs will allow you to recast a 16:9 picture as 21:9 and then just show the central 16:9 out of that, to get full screen Stretchyvision.
BBC4 actually do transmit 4:3 material encoded into 16:9 , but not many of the channels showing legacy material do, so the encoding for those is done by the YouView box.
And YouView are unrepentant about going against the D-Book recommendation here that the encoding, even if sent onwards at 4:3 within 16:9, should carry the information that it was received as 4:3, which would enable many TVs to stretch it to 16:9.
But this is the limit of YouView's intransigence here.
If your old 4:3 TV has a 16:9 mode, then it can show the YouView output letterboxed, which is the best you can get without cropping.
A '4:3 in 16:9' picture will be shown smaller, in the middle of the screen, instead of the full size that it would be if YouView preserved the information that the picture had been broadcast in 4:3. That can be a legitimate beef if you like.
But a 4:3 set without any 16:9 capability can only ever show a correct widescreen picture if the 16:9 picture is reencoded in the centre 4:2.25 of a 4:3 screen, with black bars top and bottom, by some other device before it is sent to the 4:3 screen.
And I think YouView can be excused for not doing that, at least in this day and age.