[mythtv-users] Cropping with PVR-150

Brad DerManouelian myth at dermanouelian.com
Thu Sep 25 17:10:19 UTC 2008


On Sep 25, 2008, at 9:59 AM, Jim Stichnoth wrote:

> I recently installed a Hauppauge PVR-150 to complement my two  
> HDHomeRun boxes, with the s-video input connected to a DirecTiVo  
> box.  I have closed captioning enabled in the mythtv setup, which  
> works great, except that the PVR-150 seems to be cropping around 10  
> lines from the top, and inserting a horizontal black bar at the  
> bottom.  Doing "cat /dev/video > /tmp/foo.mpg" and then playing  
> foo.mpg with xine or mplayer also shows the black bar (as well as a  
> smaller vertical black bar on the left), and foo.mpg is at 720x480  
> resolution.
>
> If I first execute "v4l2-ctl -b off", then the bottom black bar is  
> no longer there in foo.mpg (though the small black bar on the left  
> is the same).  I'm guessing that the PVR-150 and/or ivtv are  
> helpfully stripping the VBI information.  But this is not really  
> necessary since I already have global settings to deal with the  
> flickering VBI line in the picture that the HDHR picks up from  
> digital SD broadcasts.
>
> Is there a way to get rid of this bottom black bar and also keep  
> closed captions?
>
> I'm running MythDora 5.  I'm not quite sure how to figure out what  
> version of ivtv I have.

It sounds like the black bar you're talking about IS the VBI  
information, so you can't get rid of it and keep it at the same time. ;)
The solution is to set overscan when you play it back. I believe  
industry standard is that TV is meant to be played back with 3%  
overscan to crop out that stuff. Set that in your frontend and you'll  
be viewing the program in its originally intended size.

-Brad



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