Some channels do not fill up the screen

[Spirit84]

The following channels:

181 - Fox News

185 - MSNBC

do not fill up the screen. There is a large black rectangular area surrounding the picture.

It has always been this way. My cable box setting for Resolution is on "auto". I tried changing to 1080i as driected by

Rogers Tech support but that did nothing.

What is the technical explanation for this.

The Rogers tech rep told me to contact MSNBC and Fox directly because it must be their fault.

***Edited Labels***

[OLDYELLR]

I can't see 181 - Fox News and 185 - MSNBC because they're extra cost channels.  Could they possibly only be SD?

What cable box and remote do you have? Can you fill the screen using the # button on your Rogers remote or the TV remote's aspect or picture size function? Does it look like SD or HD?

We recently had this same problem with TMC (49, 48 in Toronto) and it was a piece a piece of Rogers equipment that was down, nothing to do with the broadcaster.  The CSR should know that.

[57]

@Spirit84 : Those channels are SD channels and the "windowboxing" is typical of this type of channel when the original material is widescreen (or HD in the original).  You can either leave it as it is, or use the zoom mode of the box remote, or use the "aspect/stretch/zoom" button on your TV's remote, which is usually better than the box.  If you do this though, then you need to remember to "unzoom" when you go back to an HD channel.  Here's an FAQ on the topic of "black bars".  I usually just leave these channels "as is" because the picture quality suffers quite a bit when "zoomed".

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/30-57s-home-theatre-faqs/76089-faq-black-bars-why-do-i-still-have-th...

Some SD channels do not have "windowboxing" when they show original 16:9/HD programming, but that's because the image has been "cropped" and you're losing a significant portion of the sides of the programme.

[gp-se]

@Spirit84

You could try going to: Settings -> Appearance -> Video Output: Stretch

I also personally leave "TV Type" on Auto, which chooses 1080p, even though nothing is broadcast in 1080p, the Rogers On Demand stuff is sometimes 1080p.

[OLDYELLR]

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@57 wrote:

@Spirit84 : Those channels are SD channels and the "windowboxing" is typical of this type of channel when the original material is widescreen (or HD in the original).

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Thanks for that information. I could not see because those channels are extra-cost for me.  It appalls me how many channels Rogers still only provides in SD and then has the gall to charge extra for them.