Incorrect Aspect Ratio on many channels

Did your problem get solved?

I just encountered this problem on channels in the 500's. As I was watching last night the video frooze for a about a minute and when the image came back it was in letterbox format. Prior to yesterday the image on the channel I watch (502) was always full screen. I also checked on a different TV and see the same letterbox format. Note that both TV's are HD with HDMI input from X1 slave box. I did a restart on the box and that did not correct the problem.

We just moved over to Comcast X1 from CenturyLink Prism. Century Link killed Prism, so to get a couple of stations we had to have (Blazer Tv :-)), Xfinity was our only choice. We had Prism's best premium package and did the same with Xfinity. What an eye opening difference. With Prism, everything was in HD and full screen on our 65" curved Samsung UHD tv. It was wonderful watching everything. Now to the horrors of Comcast. Only a small lineup of channels in HD (720 to boot) and most HD ends up showing in letterbox with a huge box at top and bottom. Are you serious? We are paying for this? We had to buy a Firestick 4K so we can watch TVGO on Xfinity Stream just to get access to all the HD Premium Channels we pay for with Comcast that we had with Prism. A perfect example is Showtime; 2 Showtime HD channels with Xfinity X1 service, 9 with TVGO and our old Prism. Except that even on the Stream app, much of the HD is letterbox. Another aspect of the service that drives us crazy is that none of the 'families' of premium channels on X1 are bundled sequentially. A couple here, a couple there, some HD, some not. Other than rote memory, if someone could kinly provide how you remember where your preferred stations are, that would be really helpful. Why should I have to go through this mismash of a channel lineup and have to create my own 'preference list' to make some sence out of their insanity. Just doesn't make sense.  Hopefully, as streaming services 'evolve' our 'required' stations will be found on one of them so we can ditch this antiquated 'clunker'.  Even instalation was a nightmare. Three different techs over two days with over 10 hours on the phone with 'tech support', and me eventually spending $179.00 for an additional Netgear Wax610 just to make their internet work 'kind of'. And that's with their best provided 'rented' modem. Do I sound frustrated? 

By the way, the Firestick 4K  looks like it is going to be a nice addition. The remote is 'voice', it paired easily with and controls all the aspects of our 'system' with a one button push, downloaded the Xfinity Stream app with a voice request and we were up and running in about 10 minutes.  Will use that as our 'base' watching platform, just need to figure out how to add DVR capability.  Anyway, I would appreciate any words of wisdom you might want to pass along. 

Happy Holidays! Stay Safe! 

jc

Jcarufo:

Thank you for your post. I was wondering why Centurylink was not listing Prism in their ads anymore.

We have DSL which is superior for Internet.

Comcast requires using their Internet for most of their services now. It seems traditional cable tv is going the way of the DoDo bird as far as they are concerned. We get are streaming tv over the Internet on our 2015 3D 4k Samsung tv. Comcast needs to allow customers use other Internet services if they wish to survive.

Yes, I tried watching Olympics streamed, and it did stupid padding of black on top & bottom AND grey on the sides, resulting in a picture that was inset in the middle of my computer screen. Ridiculous. There should be letterbox on the top & bottom, OR on the sides, or neither, but NEVER both. That just means someone doesn't know what they're doing.