An email from Bethesda:

"We apologize for the inconvenience, but unfortunately there is no way to fix this problem. Although Skyrim can be played on a SD TV, the game was made to be more geared towards an actual widescreen HD TV. Not playing on a supported TV set would definitely cause the problems you are experiencing. We once again apologize for the inconvenience and not being able to assist you today. It is a great game and I hope you still consider playing it even through the annoyances. Thank you for your time and if you come across any other issues, please do not hesitate and ask."

Ummm... Excuse me??? How many THOUSANDS of people are there that do not own an HDTV? So we're getting shafted because we can't shell out a few hundred dollars just to play this game correctly? This is THEIR fault, not ours. There are countless games nowadays that have screen adjust options, not to mention support for SDTVs from the get-go. Hell, even Oblivion and Fallout looked fine. There is no excuse for this. All they had to do was give people the OPTION TO SHRINK THE SCREEN A TIN BIT!!! Why is that so hard???? The LEAST they could have done was WARN us ahead of time that people with SDTVs would have this problem.

Wow, I am so glad I wasted two hours in line at GameStop at midnight for this game I have been anticipating for years, not to mention $60. What a waste. What a disappointment. Goodbye Bethesda, and Elder Scrolls. At least Oblivion was good.

Modern Warfare 3, here I come.

Sorry to say but tech changes man. I wish skyrim would run on my ps2 I still have, but it doesn't time's change and tech can't be slowed down by the few who refuse to get with the times.
And yes I understand moneys tight as well in most places but it's just how the world works.

...So their not relesing a patch for the texture issue??? When I'm not playing off my flash drive I get the bug, and I am most certainly playing on a 1080p tv (and using the hdmi cable).

He didn't say that. It's to do with the small text issue on SD TVs.

No mention of the texture issue.

I think OP is talking about a different issue, when playing HD games on a SDTV ( standard definition ) in game text often appears very small and hard to read because you are playing the game at a far lower resolution than it was designed for.

This has been apparent since the 360 was released, dead rising anyone?

I can only echo what others have said, getting a HD tv really improves your gaming experience on the 360, I'd go as far as to say it is almost pointless playing without one, the difference in quality is massive.

My issue is not with the small text. It is with the screen being cut off on all the edges. I literally cannot see my compass at all. Makes the game unplayable. But I guess patching a code that moves the compass down a few centimeters is impossible.

Ouch, that svcks. I'm on an SDTV too and get the top left corner cut off (the messages about inventory added/dropped, soul captures and other stuff). Plenty of other games have options to change the screen size. It's a shame Skyrim doesn't.

Makes me wonder what kind of TV's some of you are playing on.
Don't get me wrong. I also play the game on a SD TV at the moment. But that just means that left and right of my screen is cut off, so the only things that I miss sometimes are bits of information on what I got from my quest, or if I contracted a disease. A slight nuisance, but definitely not a game breaker.
The text is very small, but you get used to it after a while, and I can read most of it.

I do think it's a bit odd to say that there will be no fix.
I'm not sure if the mail said that, but it seems to say so. I'm no game developer, so maybe there goes allot more work into giving the option to adjust the HUD and such things (because I get the message that the HUD is the problem, not the ability to view the world itself).. but I would've thought that is not a big deal. I've seen it with a few games, just an option to shrink down/move about the HUD a bit.

Hope they re-consider. Or throw down a better explanation as to why they can't fix it... because saying that it's made with HD TV in mind, is not really enough.

Very sad and disappointing if this is true. It's a shame more developers don't realize that being able to play a game properly should not be governed by your TV. The xbox has a non-HD display setting and works while hooked up to an SD TV; therefore, the games made for it should be able to display properly as far as screen and text size. A lot of developers obviously get this, as many games are perfectly playable on an SD TV, with text that is readable. I thought Bethesda was part of that group, looks like I might have been mistaken.

Skyrim is still an amazing game and I will still play through the problem until my VGA cable gets here. As for the future, if this is their stance. I will not be buying any more of their games new, on principle, even if I have an HDTV. I also will be not be purchasing a 2nd copy of Skyrim for the new PC I plan to put together.

Husband and I are getting a new 24" HD on Thursday. And we're pretty happy about it. I guess when the excuse come along to upgrade equipment what're you gonna do? I mean when the washer stops working or your DVR finally gives out it's kinda nice to get a new one. If you don't have the money for an HD then use your quest markers, that's what I've been doing...

I don't know what else to tell you.

Does anyone know if they gave warning that it was not suitable on SDTVs?

It appears to be made for them, the game runs in 4:3 in sd mode, but they seem to forgot to fix the text.

Did you try changing your aspect ratio in your tv menu settings? Hope that helps sorry man...

I've been playing on my small SD TV in my basemant with no problems at all. The text isn't dead sharp but it's all there, nothing is cut off.

This isnt game specific. Many many games dont look good on a SDTV.

Well, it's on the back of the box.(where the info about number of players and size of gamesafe is located)
HDTV 720p/1080i/1080p

i had the same problem but mine sdtv has a scale button which centers the game again. maybe your has it to.

My TV and the 360 itself have the same option to change the aspect ratio, but the compass is still cut off, and on top of that, makes the text even smaller than it was before. At least MW3 doesn't have this problem.

To most people that is the same as a parent buying their kid a mature rated game. Yes the information is there in front of them, but do they look at it? Maybe. Do they care? Nope.

I have plenty of games that show that same info but their screens aren't cut off on the sides. It's only ever happened to me with THIS game, the only game I bought this year because it was my most anticipated game of all time.

Neither fallout nor oblivion have a "SDTV" tag in the box, both of them having the one mentioned. While I have a HDTV, thus not having this particular problem, I wonder what kind of legal responsibility Bethesda has towards SDTV users if proven they never specified their game could not be played in such monitors.

All i see is whining like all these other rinse and repeat threads on here... Simple solution Op... Go buy a HDTV, it's 2011 bro.. To play Skyrim on SDTV is a insult to the game in itself. Plus Black Friday is coming up and there will be some killer deals on some HDTV's. If you can drop $60 on a game then why not drop a little more to enjoy your games in their full glory. Mind boggling

Because I shouldn't have to. If Beth had warned us SD users that we wouldn't be able to play the game normally then we wouldn't have bothered getting the game. And "a little more" is about three times the cost of the game. That's three times more money than I am able to spend right now. If it's so damn easy to buy an HDTV, then why don't YOU buy one for me?

Or they could just fix the issue. It's not even hard to fix, it would be way easier than fixing any other bug in the game. I have 4 HDTV's in my house (big family) but I can't play on any of them because they are always in use by other people and I would rather play in my room. Just so happens I have an old SDTV from right before they started making HDTV's. That doesn't mean I should be discriminated against because I can't afford an HDTV and the other ones in my house aren't available to use.

What's mind boggling is all the people like you with your pointless responses about how stupid or insulting or wasteful it is to play the game on an SDTV. You know what I find stupid, insulting and wasteful? Having a buy a new TV to play a game when the TV I have works perfectly fine. I don't care what year it is. Honestly, I don't care if HDTVs were only $1 and I had 12 of them. I would still be annoyed that some developers are too lazy to incorporate some kind of option or scaling to make their games display properly on a non-HD TV. You want to make the next console generation HD only? Fine, make the new consoles not work at all for older TVs and put that restriction in place. As it is, with this generation. The xbox has a 480p display mode, it works on my TV and my TV works fine. I expect the games I buy to work properly on it. I don't care about the fact that it won't look as good as it would on an HDTV, But I should be able to make the screen fit and the text readable.