[DEV] Progress

[McBainUK]

Nice work Hairy, nice bit of polish.

[ISSUE] CS-HD main menu items, plugin name button text overflow [HAIRY, FATMANDO]
Do you guys get this problem on your setup? I've found the plugin name just has to be >8 chars and then it overflows the button background. I don't think I've seen it on any SD edition main menus.

[Fatman_do]

I don't recall off hand seeing this. Will look at it to see if I get the same thing. Chances are if you do, I will.

[Hairy]

[ISSUE] CS-HD main menu items, plugin name button text overflow [HAIRY, FATMANDO]
Do you guys get this problem on your setup? I've found the plugin name just has to be >8 chars and then it overflows the button background. I don't think I've seen it on any SD edition main menus.

I think this relates to viewing the CS-HD version on a 4:3 display. The graphics will distort, but the text rendered by GB follows the screen resolution (aspect ratio).

The two versions appear to be causing a good bit of confusion, is there any merit it renaming the Community-HD version to Community-WS, to play up the widescreen aspect rather than the Hi-Def aspect. I make the suggestion ignorant of the level of heart ache involved in changing the reference at this late stage, but more in the hopes that a strategic "find and replace" would do it. (:o ???)

So the two versions would be:

Community-SD = Standard Display (4:3)
Community-WS = Widescreen (16:9)

Thoughts ???

[Fatman_do]

I have a utility that can do a find and replace to all files in a directory tree, so it will not be a problem to change.

[McBainUK]

I think this relates to viewing the CS-HD version on a 4:3 display. The graphics will distort, but the text rendered by GB follows the screen resolution (aspect ratio).

I get this on my lounge HTPC with a 16:9 CRT TV. By screen resolution do you mean the Windows screen resolution? That's set to the same as the TV: 768x576 (UK PAL).

[Hairy]

I've reviewed all the mainmenu layouts and have tweaked them so that (I think) text won't overlap the button graphic.

I've found the plugin name just has to be >8 chars and then it overflows the button background.

This is what made me think that it was the widescreen layout running on a 4:3 display. That's the only time I've seen the text run off the button graphic. I just did a quick test and for me with standard pt text sizing I get:

CS-SD on a 4:3 display = 15 characters inside the button graphic
CS-HD on a 4:3 display = 12 characters inside the button graphic

CS-HD on a 16:9 display = 16 characters inside the button graphic

Do the mainmenu graphics (specifically the Background Mask.png) look distorted to you on your lounge HTPC 16:9 TV?, like the pic attached. If so then somewhere along the line your PC is distorting the widescreen graphics/layout to fit a 4:3 aspect ratio.

Currently you are running at 768x576 which is Pal SD 4:3 resolution. My understand of aspect ratio was that it didn't really matter (aesthetically) what resolution you were running, your display would distort any graphics to there final aspect ratio dictated by the actual physical size of the screen. Maybe having a 4:3 aspect ratio windows screen resolution is effecting how the graphics appear on screen - but I don't really know why ???

[McBainUK]

Do the mainmenu graphics (specifically the Background Mask.png) look distorted to you on your lounge HTPC 16:9 TV?, like the pic attached. If so then somewhere along the line your PC is distorting the widescreen graphics/layout to fit a 4:3 aspect ratio.

It looks like that as far as the text overhang is concerned. The Background Mask.png looks ok but I've nothing to compare it against, which part of it gets noticeably distorted?

Currently you are running at 768x576 which is Pal SD 4:3 resolution. My understand of aspect ratio was that it didn't really matter (aesthetically) what resolution you were running, your display would distort any graphics to there final aspect ratio dictated by the actual physical size of the screen. Maybe having a 4:3 aspect ratio windows screen resolution is effecting how the graphics appear on screen - but I don't really know why ???

This is a TV-out via s-video which I think maybe is always 4:3 Since my resolution is 4:3 would that make the CS-SD a better choice?

[Hairy]

It looks like that as far as the text overhang is concerned. The Background Mask.png looks ok but I've nothing to compare it against, which part of it gets noticeably distorted?

The Background Mask.png is effectively the light blue border around the menu and the light blue border under the task image. I've attached screens of how they should look in HD and SD. edit: if you compare the screen shot on the right to the screen shot two posts above, then you can see that the Background Mask.png in the screen shot above is compressed horizontally and doesn't look right.

This is a TV-out via s-video which I think maybe is always 4:3 Since my resolution is 4:3 would that make the CS-SD a better choice?

Have you tried CS-SD?

As for the the s-video output, I'm running a similar setup. My TV is a Philips WS CRT, but like a lot of CRT sold as widescreen it's actually a 16:10 display. So to get a square pixel aspect ratio I've installed powerstrip and created a custom resolution of 864x540. With this resolution my desktop displays perfect square pixels and I can surf on it handy enough. I can set my aspect ratio to 16x10 in the config and most video displays correctly set to auto.

You can try a GIS for calibration and try an image with a circle on it, if it doesn't look like a perfect circle on your lounge TV, then your display is distorting the image it gets via the screen resolution and resulting aspect ratio.

I've been told that maybe I'm a little too sensitive to aspect ratio distorting, it drives me crazy. It either looks right or it doesn't.

[McBainUK]

Have you tried CS-SD?

Yes, attached are screenshots made with the latest build (CS-HD is on the right).

You can try a GIS for calibration and try an image with a circle on it, if it doesn't look like a perfect circle on your lounge TV, then your display is distorting the image it gets via the screen resolution and resulting aspect ratio.

"GIS"? Can you post (or email) a dummies guide for this?

[McBainUK]

I see that there's a new version of the iPlayer plugin out (http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?p=331814). Do you think you'll get chance to skin this fatmando? If not I'll have a bash