Got a new Hard drive digibox and when its connected to my widescreen philips telly the aspect ratio on the tv keeps on flicking from different ratios. Mostly zoom 16:9 which cuts the top and bottom off and some of the sides although the picture is in the best proportion.

In the set up menu on the digibox you can choose between 4:3 and 16:9, im guessing i need 16:9 to show the best on my tv. I cant find an option on my tv to lock the aspect ratio.

To confuse things more, different tv channels seem to broadcast in different ratios which is why i think the tv gets mixed up every time i change channel. Its just annoying having to pick up the other remote everytime i switch over.

I used to have these issues with freeview on my widescreen telly, some channels letterbox the image vertically as well as horizontally in different programmes. Setting the tv to 16:9 and the digibox to suit works fine with me with sky. Sounds like your tv has one of the annoying auto resizing "I know best" aspect ratio things on it which is a real annoyance. Sorry I'm not much help. Silly question but have you found/googled/consulted the manual for the tv or contacted the manufcaturer to try and lock it to 16:9 or turn off the auto-aspect feature?

Ned.

how old is the tv ? New TVs are almost all given the option to fix aspect ratio to widescreen.
Older units 5-10 years were not given the option purely because at the time, there was not the demand. Sorry, I also cannot help further. Can't you use it as a good excuse to get yourself a nice widescreen LCD jobbie