Vista Media Center Live TV Picture Size

[jbartosh]

Hello, using Windows Vista Media Center playing live TV most channels come in full screen, however, there is one channel that is much smaller, basically framed by black bars on the tops and corners. On a TV using a converter box that channel is full screen. Any ideas on how to get this to play full screen? Or has somebody had this problem before?

[edDV]

Some DTV stations screw up and put 4:3 inside a 16:9 letterbox frame giving you black on four sides.

[yoda313]

Media Center has four zoom modes. Right click while watching tv and you can select the zoom modes.

Zoom 1 is your native display - if its 4:3 it will display 4:3.
Zoom 2 is basically a 16:9 crop of a 4:3 source.
Zoom 3 - I'm not entirely sure the difference of this mode - It may be a 2.35:1 interpretation of a letterbox program.
Zoom 4 - This one I love - it stretches a 4:3 source into a 16:9 screen WITHOUT distorting the frame. How they do it I don't know. But it is great for watching a "full screen" show on your widescreen set without it looking all distorted and goofy looking.

By the way - does anyone here know how MS does that? I'd love it if my tv had that feature natively. It only has a 25% max overscan mode for letterboxed programs. It won't work on de-distorting a 4:3 source. The tv only zooms in a 4:3 source.

The zoom 4 mode in Media Center is quite impressive.

[jbartosh]

Ok great. Thanks alot. I'll use the zoom feature and do some experimenting with resolutions. Very helpful.

[yoda313]

Sure thing jbartosh.

I'm willing to bet the second zoom mode will work best. Are you using a widescreen monitor or tv? Then that second mode should do the trick.