Sidebar Pan

[Richard]

With SD content either your display or an external scaler will provide a 4:3 format to correctly display a 4:3 image with black or gray bars on the sides. If this is not moved then eventually you will get a defined line burned in where the gray/black bar and image meet. The way to prevent that is to slowly move the image back and forth and you will see that the side bars are not always the same size and the image is not always in the center.

How much motion you get depends on the designer. Mitsubishi moves theirs quite aggresively and I have had a couple of service calls for the image not being in the middle and the gray bars being very different sizes.

Another method is called orbiting where the image is actually moved in a circular pattern rather than just back and forth.