I know this subject has been discussed a lot and after reading on this I am still confused on the answer. I currently have a rather old media center pc and the video card is an MSI Radeon HD4550 and my TV is a Westinghouse LTV-32w3 HD. I recently moved to using a Silicon Dust HDHomeRun Prime and have cable through Comcast. When viewing the media center portion the picture covers the full screen of my TV. When I go to live TV or Recorded TV I have black horizontal bars on the top and bottom. I commonly have my TV set at widescreen or I also have vertical black bars on each side. The widescreen does not seem to widen the actual picture.
My question is what is the trick to getting a full screen picture. Is it the video card. Is it the TV. Is it the software setup. Is it a combination of both. I have been researching building a new media center and wonder what would I want to look for that would give full screen TV. I mainly use media center for watching recorded TV but also for accessing photos and music.