MPG Aspect Ratios

[HtV]

You could try DIKO, it has an option for widescreen material, to be shown as letterbox.
http://www.vmesquita.com/en/diko.htm

You could also exlpore the guides on: http://www.videohelp.com, I'm quite sure you can re-encode to letterbox with ffmpeg, you just have to know the right parameters.

[djtaylor]

It seems that nothing exists that will add the bars top and bottom of a 16:9 recording for playback on a 4:3 screen.

With my freeview set-top box i have it set to letterbox on 4:3 display, so i can watch stuff on 4:3 screens. Is there an equivalent setting somewhere to tell GBPVR or the Nova-T card to record in letterbox mode like my set-top box does.

Or does the set-top box do something to the stream real-time if it's outputting to a 4:3 screen?

Many thanks.

As I said, the only way I can think of is to use something like ffpmeg or mencoder to manually resize and add the top/bottom borders but then you'd have to do this for each recording which is a lot of effort if you want my opinion.

It's simply not a gbpvr issue. All that gbpvr is doing is saving the broadcast stream and then sending that broadcast stream straight to the MVP. Gbpvr is doing no processing whatsoever, it's a feature of the MVP that is doing this sizing.

David.

[djtaylor]

Is the MVP setup for displaying 4:3, You can change/check this by using the hauppauge software to load the dongle you want to use, or to use the newest beta-dongle from hauppauge (seems to be stable), both will give you the option to choose 4:3 or 16:9 output to tv.

The problem with this is that you can't exactly change it per recording you play back and when some stuff is in 16:9 and some in 4:3, one of them is going to be wrong. Besides which, if it's truly doing 16:9 anamorphic then the display on a 4:3 TV that doesn't support it will still end up with vertically stretched images because it should be doing 4:3 letterbox not 16:9.

David.

[djtaylor]

You could try DIKO, it has an option for widescreen material, to be shown as letterbox.
http://www.vmesquita.com/en/diko.htm

You could also exlpore the guides on: http://www.videohelp.com, I'm quite sure you can re-encode to letterbox with ffmpeg, you just have to know the right parameters.

Again, same problem, diko or ffmpeg or mencoder all require considerable post processing *per* recording. Is it worth it?

David.

[HtV]

Again, same problem, diko or ffmpeg or mencoder all require considerable post processing *per* recording. Is it worth it?

David.

I agree completely, it wouldn't be worth all the trouble for me, perhaps for a special movie or something, but not for all widescreen recordings I make.

[sixgun]

Thanks for all your comments.

I still think it should be possible to tell the Nova-T card to record in letterbox mode, or tell the MVP to letterbox the stream it is currently playing.

I'd rather not do any post-processing, as sometimes i watch stuff that is still recording.

It seems to me that the MVP, which is basically a set-top box, ought to be able to letterbox the picture for me, just like my freeview set-top box does.

I agree it's not a GBPVR issue. It's an MVP omission in my view.

I have searched the web for about an hour just now, and not turned up anything. Other than a few other people asking similar questions. Apparently, the MVP just scales whatever stream it gets to the size of the TV it has been set up for.

I have also found out that not all freeview channels are equal, both in terms of bandwidth and resolution. The recording i was experimenting with was actually recorded in 544x576. Check this page (http://www.mymuxdata.tk/) out for more info.

When i get chance i am going to have a play with patching the test file i have to a few different resolutions to see what happens.

[Ton]

Hey,

I wrote the MVPRecoder tool for just what you're describing: recode files to be displayed correctly on my MVP, without having to do manual recodes every time (I read you checked it out).

If you'll send me (small) snippet of an offending file, I'll have a look and see what I can get MVPRecoder to do...

MVPRecoder already has an option that will try to middle when the aspect-ration is really out-of-whack (a lot higher then 16:9).

[HtV]

You might want to try the betasoftware-dongle from hauppauge, I tried it and it does handle aspect ratios a bit different I think. I can't really explain what the difference is but I think it's worth a try.
You can download it here: http://home.tiscali.nl/htevoortwis/dongle.zzz,
I will leave it there a week or so, rename to dongle.bin and replace your old dongle.bin, back it up first

[sixgun]

Thanks, i've downloaded the dongle.zzz file.

It didn't seem to make any difference. I set my TV aspect ratio to 4:3 using the hauppauge software, then go back to GBPVR play the file and it's still cropped and stretched.

I took some photos to try and show the problem.

This is a photo of the mpeg file on the 4:3 TV
[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

This is a photo of the mpeg file in VLC player
[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

as you can see the image has the left and right edges cropped and it's also vertically stretched.

[HtV]

Bad luck. Do 4:3-tv's never have aspect ratio selection? On my widescreenI can choose all kinds of AR, I don't think I've ever seen it on a 4:3-tv.
Btw did you notice any difference in colour/brightness/sharpness with this dongle. I think it was Tipstir who said to have better quality. I did not keep this dongle because it takes a lot longer to load.