squigly line between top of picture and letter box

[longhorngeek]

I have a squigly line between the top of my picture and the top letter box strip.

This only seems to happen on stations that are broadcasting 4x3. It displays as a smaller 4x3 in the letterbox with the sides cropped.

The PBS stations don't have this problem as the f7 key makes the 4x3 use the entire 4x3 screeen instead of inside the letterbox with the sides cropped.

Is there a way to make all of the stations use the entire screen when receiving a 4x3 signal. This happens on live tv and playback from recording.

ati 9550 (gigabyte version)
nvidia video decoder
kworld 110
svideo out to conventional 4x3 TV
xp 1900+

Thanks for your help.

[sub]

I have a squigly line between the top of my picture and the top letter box strip.

This only seems to happen on statoins that are broadcasting 4x3. It displays as a smaller 4x3 in the letterbox with the sides cropped.

The PBS stations don't have this problem as the f7 key makes the 4x3 use the entire 4x3 screeen instead of inside the letterbox with the sides cropped.

Its probably the VBI information you're seeing (Closed Caption data etc). This is usually hidden by the TVs overscan, but your TV out on the video may not be producing a big enough picture to be moving this outside the edge of the screen.

To correct it, you can either look at your video card tv out settings to make the picture slightly bigger (to match the overscan you'd get with normal TV), or alternatively try tweaking the <HorizontalZoom> and <VerticalZoom> settings in config.xml.

is there a way to make all of the stations use the entire screen when receiving a 4x3 signal. This happens on live tv and playback from recording.

It usually will, but it depends what the 4:3 picture looks like. Some stations transmit letter boxed 14:9 pictures in a 4:3 frame - in this situation even though GB-PVR is showing the 4:3 each frame fullscreen, you'll still get some small black bars at the top and botton because the black bars are part of the 4:3 picture.

They do this because its a convenient middle ground between widescreen and 4:3. (black bars top and bottom arent too big, and not too much is trimmed from the left and right sides)