[mythtv-users] Fix bad aspect ratio?

[William Uther]

Hi,
   I'm making my first mythtv box.  I have a problem with the aspect 
ratio.  I have a 4:3 TV and a widescreen signal.  The image appears 
"squished in".  Here is my setup:

Motherboard: P4VP-MX
   Chipset - VIA.  On board video: ProSavage

Monitor: A very weird TV :)
   Grundig Xentia 72
   It has a VGA input.  640x480 Horizontal refresh: 31.5 Vertical 
refresh: 60
   It is a 4:3 aspect ratio TV.

Capture card: VisionPlus DTB.

OS: Debian testing

Myth: using the Dijkstra debs

XFree86: I can't get the savage drivers to work - I can't find a 
modeline that works with this weird TV.
   I've ended up using the 'vesa' driver.  That does work.  640x480.

When MythTV front end starts up I get this warning:

* Couldn't find Xv support, falling back to non-Xv mode.
* MythTV performance will be much slower since color
* conversion and scaling will be done in software.
* Consider upgrading your video card or X server if
* you would like better performance.

I'm in Australia and our digital TV is widescreen.  Here is the line 
from a recent mythbackend logfile:

Videostream: ASPECT: 16:9  Size = 720x576  FRate: 25 fps  BRate: 6.00 
Mbit/s

As I said above, the image appears "squished in", like a 16:9 signal 
being scaled to 4:3.  I've tried the 'W' command to switch aspect 
ratio.  It doesn't seem to do anything.

Is this all a problem with XFree86 drivers (or the 'software scaling')? 
  Any other ideas?

Thanks for any help,

Will            :-}

P.S. The remote that came with the VisionPlus looks to the system like 
a USB keyboard.  The 'power' button on the remote generates 
Alt+Ctrl+Shift+F6 which shifts back to virtual terminal 6.  I don't 
want this to happen, and I can turn all VT switching off with the 
XFree86 Option "DontVTSwitch", but I'd like to keep the option of 
switching to another terminal.  Thoughts?

--
Will Uther                                  National ICT Australia
Phone: +61 2 9385 6357             School of Computer Science and 
Engineering
Email: willu at cse.unsw.edu.au             University of New South Wales
Web: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~willu/        Sydney, Australia