MeTV, COZI-TV and others embed partially squeezed 4x3 pictures in their 16x9 signal, which presents as a normal 16x9 or 4x3 picture when decoded. This allows commercials and promos to be shown in widescreen if produced that way, while old movies and TV shows are shown in glorious 4x3 and you don’t have to dive for the remote to reset the aspect ratio every time you change the channel.
MeTV goes a step further and crops to the vertical safe area before embedding, so that a 4x3 picture is presented in semi-widescreen, still with pillarbox, but the show fills more of the picture area. It’s otherwise identical to the 4x3-in-16x9 technique becoming increasingly popular with ATSC broadcasters.
The Plex Client on my FireTV stick (VIZIO 55" in bedroom) honors the widescreen flag embedded in the ATSC (MPEG-2) recording, but not the Plex client on my Samsung 65" (2016). I don’t transcode or otherwise alter my ATSC recordings, and the Samsung is hardwired so it streams content straight from disc, but the FireTV is is on WiFi, so I expect the server is doing some mild transcoding to keep the bitrate down.
What happens during playback on the Samsung is that the picture is not being stretched, so both the 16x9 and the embedded 4x3 picture are horizontally squeezed such that circles appear like ovals and faces resemble the droopy dawg cartoon character.
You can’t switch the aspect ratio in app mode, and the effect is so annoying that I can’t enjoy my recordings on the biggest screen in the house.
