HDMI hookup, black lines on side of screen

jonnymac44

jonnymac44

Joined
Sep 27, 2007
Messages
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I've had a Samsung 43 inch LCD TV for a while now, and a while back had problems with scrolling purple lines going from bottom to top of the screen. I was told the component video cables might be causing some interference, so I finally ordered a shielded HDMI cable to see if that helped.

Well, the scrolling lines are gone, and the picture is great, but now when I turn on the tv to watch television (through a motorola DVR cable box), all of the channels are coming through in a "square" format, not in widescreen. It leaves about 4 or 5 inches of black on each side of the tv screen. I can change the picture size to wide, but I lose some of that beautiful clarity.

Any suggestions?? One of the reasons for having a nice widescreen tv is to watch a widescreen, but now all my channels are square, just like the old days!:D I was wondering if anybody knows anything about this.

Thanks,
Jonny
 
Some TVs have different letter boxing options to "kill" the dead space that a widescreen can't display showing 4:3 format.

Unless it's cutting out part of the picture it should be preserving your aspect ratio and resolution.
 
65535 said:
Some TVs have different letter boxing options to "kill" the dead space that a widescreen can't display showing 4:3 format.

Unless it's cutting out part of the picture it should be preserving your aspect ratio and resolution.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll go digging around a bit more in the manual and see what I can find.
 
Those channels are broadcast in the 4:3 format. If you stretch them out to cover the wide screen, it distorts the picture a little, costing you some clarity. The only solution I know of is to go with all HD programming, which is broadcast in 16:9 format. Of course, that may eliminate a lot of the shows you want to watch if they are not available in HD.
 
Call you cable company and when the guy comes out have him take signal levels. The flowing lines in you TV are caused by a problem in the cable system, usually at the main connection a spot called the tap plate. As for the HDMI problem its just settings, you may need to change some settings on the cable box too.

P.S. tell them you have a hum bar.
 
knifenut1013 said:
Call you cable company and when the guy comes out have him take signal levels. The flowing lines in you TV are caused by a problem in the cable system, usually at the main connection a spot called the tap plate. As for the HDMI problem its just settings, you may need to change some settings on the cable box too.

P.S. tell them you have a hum bar.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info guys. As far as the signal levels, I have struggled with that in the past. For some reason the cable company has told me that the signal is weaker than they would like it to be coming into my house. I've been close in the past to convincing them to rip it all out and replace it. Maybe I'll have to start bugging them again. The HDMI connection really did help with the "hum bars" (I knew there had to be a name for 'em:D).
 
The wiring and splitters could also be causing some of that problem, gold radio shack splitters and RG-59 cable are two things you don't want with today's cable systems. If they have already told you that the signal level is low coming in and have not fixed it tell'em to get with it, you might also want to try a quality signal booster.

Its most likely a unbalanced or old system that's causing the low levels and if their like most other cable companies you will hear lots of excuses before anything gets fixed.
 
For about 2 months I had no consistent cable Internet and had to solely use my iPhone for all my internet needs, trust me, get them to fix the cabel issues now before it gets worse like it was with me.
 
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