cuz its annoying when text is off screen due to the format being for people with widescreen TV

maybe in a future patch ? how hard could it be to implament , just steal what ever it is teh Call of Duty franchise has for when you star a new game you can adjust the screen placement

This may be a mute point, but considering even large widescreen HDTV's now cost very little couldn't you just buy a new TV? If you rTV is 4:3 it sounds like you have a CRT model, which uses a relatively huge amount of electricity... an LCD or even an LED HDTV will use far less and it would make an impact on your electric bills and provided you are charged quarterly (every 3 months) you will see it.

I just bought a 40" Samsung LED Smart HDTV for ￡400, the 32" version was available for ￡249. The difference in electric bills from going from a CRT to a LED can equate to a difference of about ￡10, so ￡40 after year one. After two years you have already saved about ￡80 provided energy prices do not change rediculously and ￡80 is nearly one third of the cost of the 32" HDTV itself. After three years that is nearly HALF the cost of the HDTV and thus realistically it means you are getting a really great deal on the HDTV, comparitive outlay for the HDTV would be ￡130.

I haven't really looked, since I only have widescreen, but aren't there any 4:3 resolutions in the game settings?

I never thought that getting a new TV could actually save money in the long-run.

I switched from CRT to LCD yeaaaaars ago,never realised it made quite a difference financially.

Ah right, sorry mate I assumed it was CRT. If your 4:3 is LCD then you will not see any financial benefit unless the LCD you have now is pretty first generation... which is unlikely, they were the toys of rich boys back then. But yeah, when you have time check out how bad those old CRT's were for energy use, they are on the same scale as Plasma HDTVs, it is quite laughable that we managed to get 2 men around the moon and back on just 6 amps and yet a CRT or Plasma TV uses about 10 times that

Epic fail.

I am not the OP, I was merely stating my statement lol.

Ironically, the OP is called "EpicFail".

Haha, win, you made me laugh.

lol... ooops.

You may want to look at a new TV.

Wide-screen has been industry standard for years now, so asking Bethesda to implement a patch for the very, very few people still playing on a 4:3 CRT monstrosity is a little much. Heck, you aren't even meant to play your console on a 4:3 TV.

Those earlier LCD's are power hogs. It is the current LED TVs that are much lower power consumption.

He may have a HDTV and needs to scale it to fit the screen, I have a Philips 47" HDTV 1920x1080 native but i have to use 1746x1004 to get everything to display on the the tv (connected via dvi to hdmi cord)

He was pretty specific about the format being widescreen. And I think your problem has more to do with the PC-to-TV display issues that occasionally crop up.

I'm absolutely supposed to be able to play my console (360) on a 4:3 TV. Its support for HD has increased over the years, but the "standard" TV when it launched was CRT and 4:3. Skyrim is the first game I've played that doesn't support 4:3.

With that said, I know that HD has become the standard and that even though the console supports it (next gen consoles very well may not), I understand that Bethesda designed their game around HD and, therefore, widescreen. I don't hold it against them, I know I'm behind the curve. I can tell the xbox to use widescreen so that I can see all of the text, but it makes everyone look like skinny puppets on my TV, so I choose to lose some of the text (none that I'm losing is really that critical) since I spend most of my game looking at the world and its inhabitants.

so u've set your ps3 to 4:3 and the game doesn't care? wow they really did focus on the graphics with this one didn't they? didn't even imagine someone with a SDTV would play video games....haha. sorry, not funny for u that svcks.

edit: i just bought a 32" for 225$ which is less than what i payed for the ps3 so if u got the ps3 u can get a decent hdtv. as long as u don't sit too far from it...

I hate that too, there's no way I could even come close to affording a wide, plasma, or HDTV plus I think it would be a waste of money anyway. Personally I don't see any difference between a HD/plasma/LED TV and a regular TV I know they function differently but I don't notice any real change when looking at the 2.
there's no way to change the screen size on the console either so I have to live with not knowing how much money I have or if I've contracted a disease or anything. It makes me have to check my attributes page constantly and trade with my companion constantly which is frustrating.

why get a new TV when I have a perfectly good one now .-.

maybe if the colours start changing like my last one did where blue = purple red = green and everything else was just off as well ...

Really? I've come across dozens. Even going back to a game like Halo 3 was a total bastard to play in 4:3.

This generation of consoles was not designed to work with the previous generation of TVs. You can TRY it, but developers haven't been supporting it for years. I don't think it's a requirement for Submission at Sony or Microsoft any more either.

CRT TVs are remarkably sturdy, but that doesn't change the fact that they haven't been sold for years. Sony stopped manufacturing CRTs in 2005, and every other company followed suit within 3 years of that.

You can get a 1080p 24" LCD at Best Buy for $150 now. Granted, it's probably the worst picture quality possible with a 1080p TV, but it's already worlds better than what you're working with. That should also address the "It's too expensive," arguments, because unless you're living on the street and/or struggling to support a family of 5, you should have no problem scraping together $150 for a TV. I say this as a struggling actor, so believe me, I know poor.

Admittedly, I don't play too many different games (not much for FPS or platformers, e.g.) so I certainly can't say that there aren't any others that don't support 4:3, only that I haven't seen/played any. (All of the Assassin's Creed franchise, e.g., has supported SDTVs.)


And what do you mean the 360 wasn't designed to work with CRT and 4:3? When it launched (2005?), standard definition was, well, still the standard. Most broadcasters at that point still broadcast in SD and HD TVs were still relatively expensive. The first 360 model to have an HDMI output wasn't, I think, until 2008. Ironically, I bought my 360 (hadn't had a gaming system for a number of years) late in 2008 specifically to play Oblivion (on a lark I'd rented it while housesitting for my sister who's kids had a 360).

And lest you think those still playing on SDTV's are a tiny minority, most of the families I know with an xbox in their household have a seperate TV for their kids to play games on, and guess what kind of TV most of these kids have to game on? That's right, the SDTV that got replaced by an HDTV for their living room.

But just to reiterate, I'm not slamming Bethesda. I know SDTV is now officially a past generation and I don't blame them for spending their time focused on the current generation. It's a beautiful game, even on my SDTV. Someday, it'll be like playing it again for the first time when I'm able to play it in its native HD.

Just a few minor corrections:

The original 360 was designed to support CRTs, but by 2006, every 360 had component cables, and by 2007, they all had HDMI. By 2008, every major manufacturer stopped producing CRT TVs, but most major retailers had stopped carrying CRTs almost a year earlier.

I find (having worked in retail, and still having to deal with a stubborn father when it comes to technology) that most people who have CRTs simply resist change. The general idea is that if the TV isn't spitting out sparks, it's still good. As I already pointed out, there's no reason anyone who isn't scraping by (and I'd argue that most people "scraping by," don't have gaming consoles) shouldn't be able to afford a small LCD TV. I ran into customers like this all the time when I worked at Best Buy, and universally, they simply were resistant to the idea of getting something they could easily afford when they had an older, functioning item in their home. It wasn't because they didn't recognize that the new TV was light years ahead of their old one, and it had nothing to do with financing. People get comfortable with one particular thing, and they don't like the idea of changing something that's as much of a family fixture as a TV (I won't comment on how sad it is that the TV is a family fixture).

Well, you're obviously more knowledgable than me. Thanks for the corrections (I don't want to be spreading false info).


I'll admit to being stubborn. In my case, I don't think it's being resistant to change so much as being thrifty, maybe frugal. Whether that's bad or good ... well, I'll leave that to others to judge. I only gave up my '97 pc (233Mhz pentium) a couple of years ago. It still worked fine (I'd upgraded it a bit over the years, of course), but my hand was finally forced by too many websites not working with the browsers supported by my OS (there was no way I could run any OS later than 98se on it).

On one hand, it seems incredibly wasteful to me to see how often people replace fully functioning items. Otoh, our society has just reached the point where technology is advancing so quickly, seemingly exponential, that "functioning" isn't the same as usable anymore for an ever increasing number of products. I have no illusions about it, despite my stubborn tendancies, which is why you don't hear me complaining about Skyrim not explicitly supporting SD. The only issue I raised was to counter the claim that the console itself (at least the 360) didn't support SD, which it most clearly does.

I have a friend with a similar problem and he fixes it by forcing it to display in "letterbox" mode by setting his TV to letterbox and 360 to output in SD widescreen. It's not going to work for all those on 4:3 CRT sets but it's worth a try if the option exists. It does make his screen look TINY though.

I hear this LCD / Plasma is superior technology argument ALLOT, and IMHO I just don't agree. Being the proud owner of a brand new, all singing, all dancing LG Plasma set (That took me a year to save for) I'd rather have my old CRT back for gaming any day of the week. They just handled motion so much better IMHO. I've gone from CRT with no complaints to an LCD in glorious blurry vision whenever the camera is panned around to a strange "doubling" effect on my Plasma, lol. I want my HD CRT back damnit!

I found the source of your problems