I got a DTV converter. I have a 3 year old 25 inch standard CRT tv.
Some of the channels fit the whole screen, but others have a lot of
black around the edge, leaving me with only something like an 18 inch
square in the center of the screen. WHY?

There is some option on the converter menu to "change aspect ratio".
I tried all the 3 settings. one of them is all wrong, the other is
this square in the middle, and the 3rd is AUTO, which is where I have
it set, and that is the default (recommended) setting. There is no
way to make the picture fit the whole screen.

I know that some DVD movies have Wide Screen, so they end up with a
black bar on the top and bottom, but using the converter, there is a
black border all the way around the picture. This dont seem
right.....

I noticed that one of the channels has TWO channels from the same
station, like 8.1 and 8.2. Sometimes they are both the same
programming, but not always. But one of them fits the whole screen,
and not the other.

It seems like this is all the way the stations are sending the
picture, not anything I can control (I might be wrong). But if I am
right, what is the purpose to making a small picture like that. On
analog, the full screen was used on all channels.

Can anyone please explain this.

By the way, I emailed one of the stations about this, but never got a
reply.

Jim