Home audio & video forum: What is 4:3 Letterbox?

format. Normally letterbox has certain standard format ratio ( I don't remember what it is) but it is not 4:3=133:1.

When you choose "4:3 Letterbox", you do that because you have a 4:3 TV and do not have a 16:9 aspect ration TV. Thus, if you subscribe to your cable's HD channels but are watching on a 4:3 TV, the 16:9 image is shown in Letterbox (black bars on top and bottom) to preserve the full 16:9 image. Yes, it gets squeezed into the "Letterbox" format, but you see everything that the original image has. If you just choose "4:3", the 16:9 image is center-cut, which means that you will get the center 4:3 portion of the larger 16:9 image and you lose the sides.

Now, if you have a 16:9 TV you simply choose the 16:9 and you get the entire image. But keep in mind, the term "Letterbox" is somewhat generic in that you can still see Letterbox on a 16:9 TV when films are shot in an aspect ratio that are shorter and wider than a 16:9 TV (like 2.35:1, 2.40:1), and when you watch these on a 16:9 TV you still get "Letterbox" bars on the top and bottom, but the sides fill the entire 16:9 TV screen and you don't see a postage-stamp sized image like you would on a 4:3 TV for these movies.

Did you see if that makes a difference?

-Pedro

There should be a setting on your TV (something like "4:3 Normal") that allows your TV to display 4:3 in 4:3, but not stretched, and it also allows the TV to display 16:9 properly. On my cable box, I use Component as it doesn't yet have HDMI but the display is the same, but on my DVD players I also have them set to "4:3 Normal" so they don't stretch old 4:3 content and shows it as such, and they display 16:9 properly. I know your cable box is different than mine, but try fiddeling with the TV Picture settings to see if you can change the display.