Widescreen image seems streched

[WelshBluebird]

Right, I've had freesat from sky installed over the weekend, and I'm loving the choice of channels I have now got (never had digital before, only anologue terrestrial).

However, I have a widescreen TV, and the box is set to output a 16:9 image, however it looks a bit stretched vertically (and people seem to have long faces etc). The only way I can make it look like the anologue channels looked like is by stetting the box to output a 4:3 letterboxed image, then zoom in a bit, so I don't see the bars.

I have read on another forum, that the only reason it seems stretched vertically, is because I've because used to watching the analouge broudcasts streteched to fill the widescreen TV. Is this true?

btw, I could take a picture using my digi cam, and post it up if that would help.

[Richard46]

Originally Posted by WelshBluebird

btw, I could take a picture using my digi cam, and post it up if that would help.

Go on; I will give an opinion; for one

[WelshBluebird]

Cheers.
For some reason, it doesn't seem to look as stretched in the pic (thats probably just me tho lol).
Here's the pic (It's corrie I know , It was the only channel out of the first 3 that had a face on lol)
http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/4653/cimg1664ec0.jpg

edit - another thing I've noticed is that on BBC1, BBC2 and News 24, whenever there is a peice of prerecorded news (as in, not someone in the studio presenting the news), there is a area to the right where for some reason the piocture doesnt' extend to, but the news bar at the bottom does. I've got a picture of that aswell.
http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/4404/cimg1665yz8.jpg

[Richard46]

Bit difficult to tell with our Sawphie who is stretching her own face anyway but Sally does look distorted to me. As you say a picture stretched vertically would be my judgement from that pic anyway.

[ows90]

Hi,
It's normal for prerecorded news footage not to fill the screen all the way to the right on News24. Your News24 picture looks ok, but the ITV one does look a bit odd. Have you got the Sky box connected via SCART from it's TV output socket into the AV1 scocket on the back of the TV. In this case an aspect signal will be sent, and the TV's aspect will be set to exacty what's required.

Other than that, you may indeed have gotten too used to stretched faces on analogue :-)

Owain.

[neilmcl]

What TV is it and what aspect ratio/wide mode have you got set on the TV?

[Andy3]

I've got a sneaking suspicion that the TV may have a 1280 x 768 panel ie 15:9....

[WelshBluebird]

It's a Thomson TV, although I'm not sure of the model though . I'll have a look later to see if I can find the manual.
I probably should have mentioned earlier, its CRT (and if I'm right, CRT's don't have set resolutions??)
I did have it set to auto, and I just tried forcing it to 16:9 aspect ratio, and nothing changed, so I'm guessing it is getting the right aspect ratio info from the sky box.

Btw, just been playing around now. I had a look at the analogue channels again. But instead of letting it stretch the image to fill the screen, I forced it to show the image in a normal 4:3 size with bars down the sides and and along the top and bottom. I then turned back over to sky, and back over to analogue, and apart from the size and shape of the image, it seems the same (ie - with what I felt the image stretched vertically).
So it seems it was just me used to the TV stretching the analogue image to fill the screen.

[WelshBluebird]

A Quick update here.
I turned off everything, unplugged the scart cables etc, then plugged everything back in and turned them back on. And now it seems normal with no vertical stretching. So I dunno what was up there lol.
Cheers to those who've posted.