RadioRon said:We watch mostly analog tv off the cable, and also some digital tv through the set-top box. When shopping for a new TV we went ahead and got a big one with new technology. I was prepared for disappointment when we fired it up because I had read and seen examples of very poor off-air analog performance in new digital sets. But to my big surprise our new TV shows analog cable signals much better than our old Sony 32 inch CRT set. Clarity, colour depth, focus, accuracy, sound, pretty much everything is improved except maybe brightness which is slightly less. The new set is a Samsung DLP unit, 56 inchs. We watch it from about 9 feet away. It is terrific with analog signals. It appears to be doubling the lines automatically which fills in very nicely and smooths out the picture. Also, the DLP function doesn't have any screen-door effect (you can't discern individual pixels) and I really like that. The only annoying thing is that we watch everything with black bars on the sides because the images are not 16:9, wastes some of the screen for sure. And to make things more annoying, more and more tv stations intentionally letterbox their shows even further knowing that many watchers are using "zoom" on their new sets to fill the screen. So they put black bars on top and bottom too! In those cases, our picture is the equivalent of a about a 46 inch conventional screen!
You're not adjusting your set correctly - alter the screen size to fit the programme you're watching. There are three basic transmission types:
1) 4:3 - standard old square format (black bars at side).
2) 16:9 - widescreen (fills screen), mostly only digital transmissions, very rare to get an analogue 16:9.
3) 14:9 - a compromise - to fit between the first two, most analogue widescreen transmissions use 14:9. As you say, black bars top/bottom and sides. You simply need to set your TV to 14:9, this gets rid of the top and bottom bars, and makes the side ones much thinner.
Isn't your cable all digital?, most programmes should be 16:9 if it is - I don't think the UK uses analogue cable any more? (not that cable has much coverage anyway!).