Missing Letters/Words on screen

[BlueMeany]

Is there any particular reason why if a program puts long words across the screen, I end up not being able to read 'em all when using Digital?

The same is true if there is words down at the bottom or top of the screen.

It only happens if watching through cable... if I switch back to normal TV then its all OK.

I've not checked the settings of late - but its not the 'letterbox' type thing - I get a 'full' picture, just with bits of it like "off the screen"

[magpie]

There are two main picture formats for TV - 16:9 (Widescreen) and 4:3 (Fullscreen).

Digital TV, of course, supports both of these. However, analogue can only support one, and so naturally supports 4:3, as most people have this sort of TV.

This posed a problem for the BBC et al - when screening a widescreen show, everything important (including text) must be "fullscreen safe" - that is, viewable by people watching on analogue.

This is, of course, very restrictive, as there is then a large portion of the screen that cannot be utilised. In order to reduce this effect, they began broadcasting widescreen programs in 14:9 on analogue (somewhere in between 16:9 and 4:3), giving small black bars at the top and bottom. This allowed for more of the screen to be used for text.

This brings us to your problem. You must be watching widescreen programs in 4:3 mode, where the sides are simply cropped. As I said above, programs are no longer made 4:3 safe, they are now all made 14:9 safe (with the exception of sports). This may cause small amounts of text to be lost for people viewing in 4:3.

The only solution available to you is to use 16:9 letterbox mode, or buy a widescreen TV and use proper 16:9 mode. If ntl could implement a 14:9 option for digital TV, that would work, but there may be technical issues preventing this.

Hope that helps

[ian@huth]

I don't think that you have got to the crux of the problem magpie. Bluemeany says that the picture is OK on normal TV which will be analogue.

Is it a 4:3 television or a widescreen one. Sounds like the picture is being zoomed if it's losing both sides and top and bottim.

[magpie]

That's what I was trying to say! The picture will be ok on analogue, because it is being shown in 14:9. On digital, however, he is viewing in 4:3, so some text is being cropped.

I've made a couple of pictures to try and demonstrate this. The one with the black bars is 14:9 analogue, and the other is the same picture shown in 4:3 on digital. BlueMeany - is this the problem you're having?

[Chris W]

magpie i am having the exact problem you have just described

[Tristan]

What mode do you have the STB set to? Is it 4:3 Pan & Scan?

[TheBlueRaja]

Ah, now this could also be relaetd to a problem i have had recently. But more on that later, try this...

Go into your menu on your box, and goto settings / TV Screen settings. If you have a widescreen telly select 16:9 otherwise 4:3. (Keep Reading )

HOWEVER, i have an issue in here whereby occasionally the "Set TV Picture signal to: " option changes from Composite to RGB and i have to go in and change it back, when its on RGB the text dissapears just as you say. So change it from what it currently is to the other option and it should work.

I have it set curretly on Composite and it works as it should - with all text on screen, if it defaults back RGB some text gets put off the edge off the screen and i have to go back and change it again.

[Stephen]

I have noticed with a lot of RGB items that the picture is always slightly to the left and misses some of the picture. That is why on a lot of xbox/ps2 games they have the option of moving the on screen image around.