DisplayMode 16:9 for MyMovies

[HenriM]

Why is there no display option 16:9 for MyMovies (like there is for DVD)?

Can this be added with an extra option for the hotkey 'S' (normal", "original", "stretch", "zoom", "letterbox", "panscan").

I have checked the source-code a little and I do see an option/possiblity in the 'geometry.cs' file. Should it be possible to add here a kind of Letterbox16:9 option (beside the other 6 options). This doesn't seem that difficult, but I don't know (yet) what other source-code changes are necassery.

My TV (and girlfriend) would be very happy with such an extra option for MyMovies... It drives here each time crazy when I am zapping through all the options of MediaPortal *AND* of the TV (that are a lot of combinations!).

[MrMario64]

HenriM,
You shouldn't really need that.

When you set the pixelratio in GUI settings correctly the movie will be automatically scaled correctly and show perfectly on a widescreen TV.

I am using MP on widescreen to

This is what I do.

I set my TV on widescreen (anamorphic mode)
Then I go to settings/Screen Calib / Screen Calib
Now walk through these setting (read on screen texts)
Set the square to 1.36 or whatever you need to have the square looking square.

Now everything on screen like pictures,Albumart and movies will be adjusted to view correctly.

This means you only need to set the TV on widescreen when you use MP and after that no more changing the TV.
MP changes everything for you to look perfectly

[HenriM]

Thanks for the quick reply. Of course I already calibrated my system with a ruler on the TV. However my 'feeling' is that I get to big black bars above and below a Movie sometimes. When I stretch the Movie then the aspect ratio in not correct anymore. I try to correct this then again with the settings of the TV.

Probaly I should experiment more with ffdshow to cut off parts of the movie at the left/right in order to have less black bars above/below the movie. However I am not certain if this works because I assume ffdshow is used as a post action on the overlay data.

In a previous life I used a Matrox G550 videocard on my TV with DivxG400 installed. A nice 'hidden' feature of the Matrox drivers is that it can switch on the fly between Clone and Overlay mode. Further you can switch between these modes with a hotkey. In the full overlay mode I then set in DivxG400 to use 16:9. Further I could define some settings for Overscan and cutting of horizonal / vertical pixels in order to fill the screen as much as possible. I always got a perfect filled screen with a correct aspect ratio without need to switch modes on the TV.

Please take a look at http://www.tac.ee/~prr/videoutils/divxg400.html for this utility. It also works for NVidea / ATI based cards. Perhaps you could also add these kind of expert settings to Media Portal?

I am also wondering why you do have these other settings especially for 4:3, but not for 16:9. It seems not so hard to add the 16:9 option then as well (at least when I quickly inspected the source-code).

[mama]

I fully agree with HenriM. I got my 42" Plasma today and plugged it to my HTPC via DVI. I never got a better picture on a TV screen. But:

1. Watching TV is nerving my wife due to the AR settings. I´ve set my TV to "wide" and MP to fit the screen. But now all is kinda "pressed". I you watch persons in TV, they have real fat a... Some more AR settings, i.e. to cut a piece of the picture on the top and bottom to fit the sides, or to cut them a bit and then stretch only a bit, would really be nice. Also if a cinema film is shown, there are those borders on top and bottom. A AR to cut them and fit or stretch the rest to the screen would be great.

2. Independent on what I set, I have two little (1 to 1,5cm) borders on the left and right side. This is only in TV mode. Home screen fits perfect.

Would be nice if you Mario or frodo, when he´s back, could take a look on this.

[MrMario64]

the space surrounding the video depends on the codec and what mode you use (VMR or overlay)

Even windvd has these small spaces when using it.


HenriM, you did not set the 2 overscan arrows right?
You left them @ 0,0 as advised ?
Also, did you set your driver to fully zoom in? so no overscan correction used?

When I set my TVout to show the taskbar by zooming out a bit (driver allows this) then ofcourse you will get more black bars on TV. Nothing we can do about that.
So, if you want the same output as a DVD does you will need to set the driver to max zoom in (some drivers call this Movie Mode or Media Mode).
Then don't set the arrows in MP, leave them @ 0,0

YOu now have the exact same output as any other DVD.
Same anount of black.

[HenriM]

MrMario64,

I have a Asus Radeon 9200 SE which is primary attached to my TV (it's in a Shuttle SB61G2V3). The resolution is set to 800x600. Further I have set in the calibration settings an overscan compensation of (0,0) and the 'square' is set to 1,50.

Of course I realize that's all dependable of the width/height of the AVI files I feed MP with. I must admit that the aspect ratio is always correct, but for some movies my opinion is that the black bars above/below the movie are to big. When I could cut off some pixel at the left/right of the movie this can be prevented without altering the aspect ratio.

I have the impression that a 16:9 setting can help sometimes. When I checked the source-code this doesn't seem hard to code ('geometry.cs' file). Perhaps I should install Visual Studio at home again in order to dig deeper into the code. I am however afraid that I like it too much and doesn't spend enough time with my real girlfriend anymore :-)

What do you furher think of my suggestion to define some settings for Overscan and cutting of horizonal / vertical pixels in order to fill the screen as much as possible as you can with the DivxG400 utility at
http://www.tac.ee/~prr/videoutils/divxg400.html This should then of course only be done in case you exceed some kind of treshold value of black bars (percentage). Again: please check this DivxG400 utility what's all possible there...

Keep up the good work! You have already a fabulous product which is growing big and mature.

[mama]

Ok, here are some pics of what I expect as a problem on my 16:9 TV. I switched through the AR settings. On the third photo (sorry, bad quality) you see that there´s no channel logo on the upper left corner. It´s the MP 4:3 mode. On the fith pic you see the logo. This was using the TVs AR for 4:3. I don´t really understand for what the other modes are, except stretch. But there all is stretched too much.

[mama]

What I forgot: If I set my output resolution to the native one of my Plasma (856x480), I get totally unuseable TV screens with any of the provided aspect ratios. Mostly the bottom of the picture is cut and all of them have borders (more than the 1-1,5 cm mentioned above). Is there a way to solve this?

[mama]

Hm, an idea: Would it be possible to make a zoom mode for TV to erase the complete picture? If there´s a 16:9 picture on my screen, it´s mostly like the first pic above. So if I had a mode to make the shown screen bigger in i.e. 5% steps pressing a key, I could fit it to the plasma. In the setting there could be a part to set the steps it should zoom the pic (2%, 5%, 10% for example).

I´ld really like this feature, because my wife hates the stretched 16:9 screen.

[HenriM]

I like this idea very much! I have seen this feature in BSPlayer and I must admit that it really works out quite good. Make sure that the aspect-ratio is correct and then keep increasing until you are satisfied with the part filled of the screen.