Cable TV Picture Cropped on Sides

[CarnationSailor]

I have a 2015 5th-wheel with a 40-inch and a 32-inch TV. When hooked up to an RV park's cable system, the left and right sides of the picture are cropped (cut off). Seems to happen on all channels and on both TVs, but I'm not sure if it happens at every RV park. (Over-the-air TV and DVD's display perfectly.)

Doesn't matter which aspect ratio I choose (normal, wide, etc.) about the left 15% of the picture and the right 15% of the picture are not there. It actually looks like what happens when a 16 x 9 (wide screen) signal is displayed in the old 4 x 3 aspect ratio.

However, in that case, the missing sides would return when "Wide" was selected. In my case, when I select "Wide", the screen is filled, but the sides are still cropped.

Again, since I don't recall having this problem at every RV park, maybe it's a "park-specific" problem.

Anyone else see this or know what causes it?

[CarnationSailor]

I talked to the campground manager (probably should have done that first), and he confirmed the problem is caused by the cable TV setup the park has. He said he could provide each guest with a converter, but there would be the additional cost for 100 sites plus the problems of people departing and forgetting to return their converter. We stayed in an RV Park near Gold Beach, OR, and that is what the management did there; however, they only had about 30 sites.

[Second_Chance]

BB_TX wrote:
Most likely the park cable is transmitted in SD only. I have Dish. And Dish transmits some channels in both SD and HD, The SD channel will display as you describe. But the same channel in HD will display in full screen.

^^ This is exactly what is happening. I've never found a park with HD cable (except a couple of Escapees co-op parks where the members have installed and maintain an HD distribution system). HD aspect ratio is 16:9 while the SD aspect ratio is 4:3 (think old-fashioned CRT/picture tube TV).

Rob

[BB_TX]

Most likely the park cable is transmitted in SD only. I have Dish. And Dish transmits some channels in both SD and HD, The SD channel will display as you describe. But the same channel in HD will display in full screen.

[rv2go]

I don't general hook up to cable but had this to happen at the last 2 CG's when I connected to the cable. When I would do a scan, all the available stations would show up as analog and not fill the screen.