I'm watching older episodes of a show that are in standard definition (from Sundance tv) that shows a black band all the way around the central rectangle of content. Is there any way to autoscale this to the full screen's resolution? (Similar to how TiVo has several scaling modes)?
Have you tried: Settings > Playback > Advanced > Stretch Video To Fit?
I have come across this with old shows being broadcast on some OTA sub-stations. Unfortunately what I usually found is its being broadcasted with the black bars as part of the picture.
Solution: Use TV remote and zoom in on picture. My theory Broadcasters added black bars, then deleted their original file. Now they broadcast their copy of a copy of a copy with black bars as part of the picture.