While attempting to play an Original Xbox game on your Xbox 360 console, a black or gray bar appears on either side of the TV or monitor

A black or gray bar appears on either side of the screen when you try to play an original Xbox game on your Xbox 360 console.

You may experience this problem when the following conditions are true:

• Your Xbox 360 console is connected to a widescreen TV or monitor.
• Your Xbox 360 console is configured to use a widescreen resolution. For example, this problem can occur if the Xbox console is configured to use 720p or 1080i resolution.

To fix this problem, we need to configure the Xbox 360 console to use a non-widescreen resolution such as 480p. After we configure the Xbox console to use a non-widescreen resolution, the widescreen television or monitor will stretch the image to fill the screen.

To configure the Xbox 360 console to use 480p resolution, follow these steps:

1. Start your console without a disc in the disc tray.
2. In the System section of the Xbox Dashboard, select Console Settings, and then press the A button.
3. In the Console Settings area, select Display, and then press the A button.
4. In the Display Settings area, select HDTV Settings, and then press the A button.
5. In the HDTV Settings area, select 480p, and then press the A button.
6. When you receive a confirmation message, select Yes, keep these settings.

Some original Xbox games do not support a widescreen format. For example, an original Xbox game may only support resolutions up to 480p. When connected to an original Xbox console, a widescreen TV or monitor may stretch the image for these games to produce an image that will fill the whole display. This stretching distorts the image slightly from a 4:3 aspect ratio to a 16:9 (widescreen) aspect ratio.Therefore, these games cannot produce a larger image.

The Xbox 360 console is designed to preserve the original image aspect ratio and to produce the highest quality image possible. The backward compatibility feature displays original Xbox games at the highest resolution that the console can produce. The backward compatibility feature also tries to display the game in widescreen if you configured the Xbox 360 console to use a widescreen resolution.

By default, the backward compatibility feature will produce an image to fill a widescreen display.

• If you configured the Xbox 360 console to use a widescreen resolution, the only way for the backward compatibility feature to fill the widescreen display is to display a black or gray bar on either side of the screen.
  
  Note This process as also known as "letterboxing."
• If you configured the Xbox 360 console to use a non-widescreen resolution, the backward compatibility feature will stretch the image to fit the screen.

Additional support

Please visit the following Web site for information about how to contact Xbox Customer Support: