Our television isn’t too old, only four years old perhaps, but it’s causing a bit of grief for us. Firstly, the tuner seems to have lost the plot with remembering channels and secondly it isn’t widescreen. The first problem can be gotten around with judicious use of the VCR and Sky digital box tuners (though we lose the option of watching a different channel if videoing off Sky), but the second problem was more of an issue because Sky started broadcasting the rugby only in widescreen, which meant that for most of the games recently we haven’t been able to see the on-screen score. (It appears too to be a problem for lots of people, including some of the radio commentators).
Anyway, the quick answer is to fiddle around in the Sky settop box’s advanced settings and set the TV mode to “4:3 Letterbox”. Widescreen shows will get “letterboxed” (i.e. the black bars on top and bottom, smaller picture, but all viewable), while older 4:3 shows will still fill the screen. Not ideal, but until we replace the TV (not in the near future) it’s a workaround.
Will try it for the All Blacks tonight.
More details at: SkyTV Widescreen tips.
