Six Nations: see the big picture

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GETTING AN obscured view of the match behind one of your regulars shaped like a rugby second row can be a disaster for any of your customers. Imagine...

GETTING AN obscured view of the match behind one of your regulars shaped like a rugby second row can be a disaster for any of your customers. Imagine their horror then to hear that, even with a perfect line of vision to the screen, they may be missing one third of the picture for every one of the Six Nations fixtures.

That's the worry of Vincent Lo, founder of the Pub Widescreen Sports Campaign, who says 80 per cent of pubs are suffering from distorted picture quality due to their failure to correctly set up Sky digiboxes and plasma TVs.

He says: "The pub is the second best venue to watch live sports after the stadium itself, but there's no reason why the experience should be second-rate. Some pubs are complaining about the huge charge for Sky subscriptions - they ought to be making the most of what they already have."

Incorrectly set Sky digiboxes feeding your TVs mean distortion of the picture in the form of horizontal stretch, and a loss of much of the picture - an experience greatly diminished for your customers. Correctly set Sky digiboxes show you the full picture as the producer intended.

Follow Vincent's guide to ensure customers are not going to see a winning drop goal by Stephen Jones pass out of view before it sails over the posts.

How do I reclaim the full picture?

- On your Sky remote control, press services

- Press 4 (system setup)

- Press 1 (picture settings)

- Press the left cursor key once to change the picture format from 4:3 to 16:9

- Press the up cursor key and select to save the new settings

- Press Sky to return to the TV channel you had on.

How do I know the process has worked?

Go to Sky News on channel 501. You should see the word 'Active' beside the red spot on the bottom left.

What do the numbers 4:3 and 16:9 mean?

These are aspect ratios. They describe how wide your TV is compared to its height. Non-widescreen sets are four units wide and three units tall.

Widescreen TVs are 16 units wide for every nine tall.

After making the changes, people still look fat on the music channels and Sky Sports News. Why?

Some channels haven't been converted to widescreen broadcasting yet, so will look distorted.

Which channels broadcast in widescreen?

All Sky Sports channels, (except Sky Sports News), Premiership Plus, BBC1 through to BBC4 and all the BBC's other channels to ITV 1-4, Channel 4 and Five (including E4, More4, Five Life and Five US), Sky 1-3, Sky News, BBC News 24, and many more. Around 80 per cent of all programmes shown today are broadcast in widescreen. However, some pub favourites, including Sky Sports News, Setanta Sports, NASN and Eurosport, are not.

Terrestrial channels still give distorted pictures when I change channels on my plasma TV. Why?

Analogue channels through your aerial are not broadcast in widescreen.

We have our Sky digibox hooked up to a big-screen projector, and everyone looks thin through the projector. Why?

Many projectors allow for 16:9 sources and can adjust accordingly. There may be an option in the menu where it will squash down the image vertically so people don't look thin. Look for the 16:9 mode on your projector's on-screen menu. If you have a second digibox, you might want to set that one to 4:3 and use it just with the projector.

We've made the changes, but we're seeing thick black bars on either side of the picture.

This often happens when screening games where British teams are playing abroad. The TV channel is being fed by a foreign broadcaster, many of which do not provide a widescreen feed. In an attempt to prevent pictures from looking fat, British TV channels will show the standard 4:3 'pillarboxed', so called because it appears that black pillars have been added to either side of the screen.

Six Nations TV Guide

Saturday February 3, BBC1, 1pm-6pm

Italy vs France: KO 1.30pm

England vs Scotland: KO 4pm

Sunday February 4, BBC1, 2.30pm-5pm

Wales vs Ireland: KO 3pm

Saturday February 10, BBC1, 1pm-5.30pm

England vs Italy: KO 1.30pm

Scotland vs Wales: KO 3.30pm

Sunday February 11, BBC1, 2.30pm-5pm

Ireland vs France: KO 3pm

Saturday February 24, BBC1, 1pm-7.30pm