[mythtv-users] Low-Def Widescreen - almost there

Brad Templeton brad+myth at templetons.com
Wed Jan 12 14:47:33 EST 2005


On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 08:43:04AM -0500, mike murphy wrote:
> We finally got a High-Def TV, but I've decided to leave the MythBox on it's S-Video tether (I have to work up the nerve to dive into a PCHD install, and in the mean time the DVI-in is reserved for the external HD tuner).  What I've been working on for the last couple hours is trying to get Myth to take advantage of the widescreen so I don't get letterbox-in-letterbox when I watch DVDs with it.

Good luck getting the DVI output to work even if you tried it with an
NVIDIA card.  Nobody here has reported any success yet at doing DVI at 1080i.

However, you can do it over component output, but you probably have to
buy something like the audio authority VGA->Component adapter, which I did.

The reason I say this is that S-video and NTSC are still just 480i,
ie. interlaced.   EDTV, which is what a DVD puts out, is 720x480p.

Now in theory, there is no reason why 480i shouldn't be able to give
you everything on a DVD, since a DVD comes at 24 frames per second and
every frame is shown 2 or 3 times, so all 480 lines should come in
an interlace.   But for some reason it often does look better in
many cases, with a nice anamorphic widescreen DVD.

Sadly, with progressive scan DVD players so cheap -- cheaper than
tha vga -> component adapter -- you might go that route in the
meantime.  However, the vga -> component is what you need to do all your
TV from your mythbox to your HDTV in a progressive format.   If nothing
else you text, computer output, web surfing etc will look vastly better
than over svideo.


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