[mythtv-users] Aspect ratio (16:9 anamorphic)

[Richard Garnish]

On Thu, 2005-05-05 at 18:10, Michael Haan wrote:
> On 5/5/05, James Stembridge <jstembridge at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/5/05, Doug Larrick <doug at ties.org> wrote:
> > > But are your pixels square?  720x480 is pretty close to square pixels on
> > > a 16:9 set.
> > 
> > I wouldn't think so, I'm using 720x576 too. I'll have a closer look tonight.
> > 
> > James.
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> > 
> 
> What do you mean by saying your pixels are square?  The text is blocky
> in the UI?  I'm having issues which I think may be similar to others
> mentioned in this thread, but not that one.  My issues is that since I
> got my widescreen hd and set my res to 1280x720, the letters in the UI
> are mostly unreadable (I have pretty good vision and can make them out
> if i take the time, my GF has no clue what they say).  I tried setting
> the UI to use "big" font and moved that up to 40, but that's really
> not doing much.  Is this issue related to yours, or should I address
> this some other way?

No, that doesn't sound like the same issue at all.  What is your
DisplaySize setting in your X config?  Setting it to 400x225 seems to
produce readable size text; setting it to the actual physical size of
the display ensures you will be needing an eye test :)

By "square pixels", what is meant is that a pixel on a TV screen has
different height and width, unlike a computer monitor.  If you draw a
100x100 box on a 4:3 PAL TV at its native resolution (720x576), the box
will appear 6.7% wider than its height.  At 16:9 the box will be 42.2%
wider than its height.

Anything that assumes that the X and Y resolution is the same will not
display correctly on a standard definition TV, whether you are looking
at PAL or NTSC, 4:3 or 16:9.  For 4:3 the error is marginal, but it's
still wrong.  For 16:9 (which is still using a resolution of 720x576 but
stretching it to fit the wide screen) objects will appear in completely
the wrong shape - text will be super-fat, circles will be eliptical,
etc.  This is my problem - while the signal from the tuner displays
correctly, all on-screen text and graphics are wrong.

Something else I've only just thought of - when watching a 4:3
broadcast, the OSD (e.g. the channel browser) displays in 4:3 mode. 
This is the only time the text looks "normal" (although I suppose, for
the reasons above, it is still wrong by 6%.  I'm a perfectionist like
that.)

Richard