I got a cable box from Comcast, why does the picture not fill my screen?

Question

I just got a cable box from Comcast. I believe I set it up right since I can watch TV, but the picture isn't filling the screen. How do I fix this?

Answer 1

First, determine whether your TV has a 720p or a 1080p screen (check the owner's manual). Then, go into the the setup menu on the Comcast receiver and find the section where you change the native resolution. The choices should be 480i, 720p, and 1080i.



If you have a 720p TV, set it to 720p. If it's a 1080p TV, set it to 1080i (there is no 1080p in broadcast television).



Your Comcast receiver will now deliver the optimum resolution and picture size for all programs on all channels.



Note that old movies and syndicated TV programs were filmed in 4:3, so you will probably have the blank areas on the two sides. That's not a bad thing. Anything you do to change it will either distort the picture horizontally or crop out the left and right sides of the image. You're better off watching such programs with the blank areas.



With old movies filmed in some variation of a wide screen format, the picture may show up as a "letterbox" image--blank areas on all 4 sides. You can increase the picture size on your TV to fill the screen, and that's usually okay. With extra-wide movie formats like Cinemascope, you'll still have thin blank areas at the top and bottom. Again, that's not a bad thing as explained above.

Answer 2

Comcast Cable Box Size

Answer 3

You were getting your HD channels with your TVs 'clear QAM' tuner. By law, if you pay for cable, the cable companies must transmit the local HD channels 'in the clear' or unscrambled. But I'm guessing you got the box because comcast scrambled so many channels, that you were down to a small number, it happened to me too. The new little box, a digital migration box has only a coaxial output if I remember correctly, either way it has no HD output. And it's not a violation of any law to not support HD with this box, the law states they need to transmit HD locals in the clear, and since they haven't stopped there's nothing you can do. So if you don't want to pay the extra 10 bucks or whatever for the HD box, you can do this. Get a splitter, run the cable into that. Now run one coaxial straight to your TV, run the other into the new little box you have, and then if you have a basic composite (or any other) connection, run that to the TV. So when you want to view HD, choose the basic cable/coaxial input, when you want to see the other channels that have been scrambled, choose the other input to view what the box is unscrambling. It's a pain in the butt, but it's your only option to get back what you had without paying a few bucks more.

Answer 4

It depends on the kind of t.v. you have. Some of the Pictures on my t.v. don't fill the screen either, there are just some channels though that do that. Is it every single channel that does that? I think I would call comcast and ask if it was the t.v. that is doing that or if it is the cable box that you bought.

(edit): Haha thank you down there :) you kno a lot more.

Answer 5

It really depends on your screen size. Listing it would help. If its (around) 42' or larger, it's because the station would look like crap any larger than that little box. You see, TV broadcasts at bad resolutions (480i/p)unless you are on the HD version of that channel.

It's pretty much because that resolution is only a certain size. It can be shrunk, but not made larger without looking bad. That's why HD fits. It can stretch more without looking bad. If this is not the problem, I'm not really an expert in this kind of thing, so best of luck.