What format is standard def. DirecTv?

I really dunno about the specs. I have a 'portable dish with tripod', that I set up when we are going to be a week or more at one destination. It is relatively easy to set up and aim, sometimes takes a bit of tweaking, but nothing crazy bad. I just take out one of the direct tv boxes from home and use that, true we do not get network channels, but with antenna, we usually have no issues.

wa8yxm wrote:
Standard Def is 4x3
Hi Def is 16x9

Does not matter if Sat, Cable or OTA.

Actually 16:9 CAN be SD, 720 or 1024i or "p"

16:9 is nothing more than the SCREEN width to height RATIO and has nothing to do with High Definition.

So, it IS possible to "broadcast" 16:9 IN SD and even find it with DVDs to boot.

But you normally will not "find" 4:3 "broadcast" as HD since the HD specs really do not "support" 4:3 directly.

But it is possible to downgrade 16:9 HD broadcast to TO FIT a 4:3 SD TV screen. This is done by "down scaling" the source which will add "letter box" (bars on top and bottom) which allows the entire width of the source to show on the screen instead of clipping the sides or using pan and scan.

At the same time it is possible to fit a 4:3 source on a 16:9 screen by adding the side bars (black bars on the sides). Some HD TVs can "upscale" the 4:3 source to make the SD source look better on the HD TV.

Honestly, I spent a good bit of my life repairing TVs and so far I have not been able to see all that much "difference" between SD and HD. But perhaps it is because I spent a lot of time setting up analog SD TVs PROPERLY resulting in extremely sharp pictures. I do have a couple of new HD TVs and really the difference in sharpness between SD and HD STILL isn't worth me replacing all of my older SD TVs..

I refuse to pay Dish EXTRA for HD programming, just silly to do so.

Even a few years ago when I had Dish installed at my home. I had a 13" 4:3 portable TV for the Dish installer to use in my basement where the coax was going to enter my house. That guy was simply amazed at how good that picture was. He said that he RARELY ever sees HD TVs LOOK THAT GOOD.

Standard Def is 4x3
Hi Def is 16x9

Does not matter if Sat, Cable or OTA.

I don't know about Directs receivers but My Dish DVR has a button on the remote which allows me to toggle between 4:3 (non wide screen) and 16:9 (widescreen).

A lot of it also depends on the TV you have and what the program is being transmitted.

Personally to me I absolutely hate the fact that many programs now days insist on doing STUPID things with the aspect ratio. Basically no matter what you set your TV to it is ultimately messed with by the producer of the program in stupid ways for creativity sake.

My favorite pet peeve about this is when you have a 16:9 TV and it is set to normal the program producer seems to think they are being "creative" by "letter boxing" AND "side bars" AT THE SAME time making the picture on your big TV nothing more than a postage stamp size with a lot of black all around.

In the old days there WERE BROADCAST "STANDARDS" to which ALL programming had to be set to. Now days the stadards have been thrown out and it is a free for all.

Many years ago I would have been trouble shooting my TV if it lost vertical or horizontal height. Now days it is normal to only have postage stamp size pictures.

The TV manufacturers don't even get it, they only give Normal (program is controlling the screen size), Wide (stretches everything wide), Cinema (severe overscan stretching top, bottom and sides cutting off heads of people and losing sides of the scenes). Just plain stupid.

To answer your question, yes, it's going to be 4:3 format and it will only partially fill your screen. You either need to watch it that way or use the "fill" option in the TV to stretch things out.

Trav'ler is twice as much as a dome? I doubt it. If you want a dome, get one, but don't use cost as a factor. It is just not true. On sale a trav'ler can be had for about 1400 dollars Pick a time when CW is offering free install and it is not that expensive. One thing you have to be careful of is a dome will weather fade faster. Also depending on where you park neither might not work. I have found over the last four years that I use my ground antenna much more than my roof top unit.