Boxed In

I have a Sony Wega KV-36HS500, and recently picked an Xbox360 Elite. So I hooked up the xbox using the HDMI cable with a DVI adapter. The Picture come through beautiful except for the fact that I have about 1-2" Black box around the entire screen. I don't know if this is normal or if there is something I can adjust. The TV is not widescreen so I have set the xbox to run at 420P, but the picture will not fill the screen. This is the only input that I am having this issue with. Thanks.

I have a Sony Wega KV-36HS500, and recently picked an Xbox360 Elite. So I hooked up the xbox using the HDMI cable with a DVI adapter. The Picture come through beautiful except for the fact that I have about 1-2" Black box around the entire screen. I don't know if this is normal or if there is something I can adjust. The TV is not widescreen so I have set the xbox to run at 420P, but the picture will not fill the screen. This is the only input that I am having this issue with. Thanks.

I heard of some issues on 4:3 CRT's and the 360.. Do you have the Xbox set to widescreen 16:9 or normal 4:3? I think you can still run at 1080i and 4:3, but never tried it so not sure.. Did you try the included component cable instead?? Or does the Elite include the HDMI cable instead of the component?

I heard of some issues on 4:3 CRT's and the 360.. Do you have the Xbox set to widescreen 16:9 or normal 4:3? I think you can still run at 1080i and 4:3, but never tried it so not sure.. Did you try the included component cable instead?? Or does the Elite include the HDMI cable instead of the component?

I tried setting it to 1080i/720p, both did a letter box effect in the already minimized space. I have hooked it up with the component cable before and it was fine that way the only problem I have currently is to many toys that want the component ports. I have the DVD player and Wii currently inputing there and every time I read about one of the switcher they seem to suck. So the HDMI to DVI for the 360 seem to solve that for me. I guess my main question is why it black box the entire screen like that. I would just pick up an upscaling DVD player and send it to the DVI port but it would be boxed as well on the left and right.

I tried setting it to 1080i/720p, both did a letter box effect in the already minimized space. I have hooked it up with the component cable before and it was fine that way the only problem I have currently is to many toys that want the component ports. I have the DVD player and Wii currently inputing there and every time I read about one of the switcher they seem to suck. So the HDMI to DVI for the 360 seem to solve that for me. I guess my main question is why it black box the entire screen like that. I would just pick up an upscaling DVD player and send it to the DVI port but it would be boxed as well on the left and right.


Not sure. I think you should only have bars on the top and bottom, but not to the right or left. 480p and HDMI on a 4:3 interlaced display just don't mix well I guess. 1080i should rendeer the best PQ, even though you will have bars on the top and bottom. Do you have the option to set 4:3 and or 16:9 in the dashboard via HDMI (mine is connected via VGA)? Also, you should have NO bars in the dashbord. Is this the case? I would also check to see if there is any settings for you DVI input in the TV menu like the Auto 16:9 Enhanced Mode (ID-1 Detection 480i/480p).

I have a Sony Wega KV-36HS500, and recently picked an Xbox360 Elite. So I hooked up the xbox using the HDMI cable with a DVI adapter. The Picture come through beautiful except for the fact that I have about 1-2" Black box around the entire screen. I don't know if this is normal or if there is something I can adjust. The TV is not widescreen so I have set the xbox to run at 420P, but the picture will not fill the screen. This is the only input that I am having this issue with. Thanks.

I'm not sure if this will help, but I had the same symptom on my 36XBR400 after connecting my SciAtl 8300HDC box yesterday. In my case the HD channels looked great, but "normal" channels had the box around them. I ended up calling Comcast and they got me into the "setup wizard" on the box where I was able to verify functionality of various displays. I believe the wizard ended up enabling 480 p/i wide and standard (four options) in addition to the 1080i that was on by default.

Additionally the cable box had a setting for video mode that was set to "fixed". Options were fixed, upconvert 1/2, and pass-through. I needed to set this to pass through.

I'm not sure if the xbox has similar settings, but I imagine it would. Enabling those additional supported resolutions may be the trick.

Since your TV accepts a 1080i input and has "auto enhancement" for 16:9 signals, I would set the XBOX to 1080i and see what happens.

That should give you an image that stretches the full width of the screen with bars on the top and bottom (which is inevitable on that TV since it's not widescreen).

I'm not sure why setting the XBOX to 480p wouldn't fill the full 4:3 screen unless the normal overscan of the TV is disabled when using the DVI input.

Have you tried Component Video? That should work perfectly on 480p...

I heard of some issues on 4:3 CRT's and the 360.. Do you have the Xbox set to widescreen 16:9 or normal 4:3? I think you can still run at 1080i and 4:3, but never tried it so not sure.. Did you try the included component cable instead?? Or does the Elite include the HDMI cable instead of the component?