FIX: Fire TV Stick weird asymmetric black bars / borders
I had a very strange issue with my Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max on my Philips Smart TV, that I could not find a solution for online, so I’m posting this in case someone else runs into it.
The problem was NOT normal aspect ratio scaling.
while functioning fine, the Fire TV Stick displayed black bars/borders only on the top and the sides, but not on the bottom. As if the image was scaled down and then shifted to the bottom so the image perfectly touched the bottom edge of the TV, while leaving black borders on the top and sides.
Because the borders were asymmetric, neither the TV’s scaling settings nor the Fire TV Stick calibration could fix it. All scaling adjustments only resized the image symmetrically, while the actual image itself remained offset on the screen, or did nothing at all. My TV even said, it’s already fitting the image to the entire screen in the scaling options.
- Other HDMI devices (like my Nintendo Switch) displayed perfectly on the TV.
- All HDMI ports worked correctly with other devices.
- Only the Fire TV Stick had this issue on all HDMI ports, with and without HDMI extension
- Normal rebooting the TV or the Fire TV Stick did NOT fix it.
- Re-plugging the stick alone also did nothing.
- Changing resolutions and aspect ratio settings did nothing.
What finally fixed it was forcing a completely fresh HDMI handshake / EDID negotiation:
Remove the Fire TV Stick from the HDMI port completely.
Disconnect power from the Fire TV Stick.
Unplug the TV itself from wall power for 1–2 minutes.
Plug the TV back into power FIRST and fully turn it on.
Only after the TV has Fully booted, reconnect the Fire TV Stick power and then HDMI.
This forced a clean handshake between the TV and the Fire TV Stick and immediately fixed the weird borders.
So if your Fire TV Stick shows strange asymmetric black bars that cannot be fixed with scaling settings, it may not actually be an aspect ratio problem at all, but a corrupted HDMI handshake / EDID state.
I hope this saves some people the frustration I went through.