[mythtv-users] Is Wider better?

[Cool Frood]

On 5/1/07, Jonathan Rogers <jonner at teegra.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-05-01 at 16:39 -0400, Cool Frood wrote:
> > Also, you needn't worry about capturing SD content with your PVR 350
> > to display on a widescreen.  MythTV does the Right Thing (TM) out of
> > the box.
>
> Well, that's correct if you mean that MythTV records the video from the
> PVR-350 and then plays it back unmodified. If you record widescreen
> video using a PVR-350 or any NTSC (which is inherently 4:3) capture
> card, it must be letterboxed. If you then play that video back on a wide
> screen, it'll end up with pillarboxing in addition to the letterboxing.
> Black bars around the entire image aren't what I'd call the Right Thing,
> but it's not really MythTV's fault, since it can't easily know there's a
> letterboxed widescreen image in there. Of course, you can easily deal
> with this by using MythTV's "4:3 zoom" preset. That's what I do to watch
> any such video, which in my case is usually 16:9 programs recorded from
> 480i ATSC.
>

Right, that is what I meant.  I've noticed that MythTV is especially
good at maintaining the correct aspect ratio.  I have had both xine
and mplayer squish or stretch video, but MythTV usually shows them
correctly.

Anyway, the point is that a widescreen monitor provides a good upgrade
direction.  4:3 video looks fine for the most part, though you may
have to zoom in sometimes, and of course, 16:9 works fine.


> That does get me thinking about how hard it would be for MythTV to
> detect when there's a letterboxed image and automatically switch to a
> zommed mode. Perhaps it wouldn't be that hard.
> --
> Jonathan Rogers <jonner at teegra.net>
>
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