Set NPVR aspect ratio to Fill

[sub]

For me I have my STB set to always output 720p output because the graph always get built with the previous resolution and the adjustment was causing a lot of grief. As a result in all SD output is full screen with embedded pillar box which Auto doesn't detect.

What exactly goes wrong? Does it display with the incorrect aspect ratio?

I'd expect your recordings would always be widescreen 720p - some filling the entire frame, and some with black bars left and right. I'd expect when you watched these in NPVR, with a 16:9 monitor, the video would always fill the entire screen (black bars would obviously still be part of that video on those channels that required it)

[mvallevand]

Nothing goes wrong, I just have to use F7 more now because it saves Remove LetterBox when I prefer to keep it on Auto.

Martin

[sub]

Why do you use 'remote letterbox'? Do you prefer to stretch the 4:3 middle part of the picture to stretch to fill the screen? The resulting aspect ratio would be wrong, but I know some people prefer this - so it would be a totally valid reason to want it.

[johnsonx42]

ok, Auto does seem to work on every show I tried. The reason that I thought it didn't work was because it always switched back to Fill after using any other aspect ratio than Auto; I was operating on the belief that it was switching back to Auto, but that Auto was not working.

However, it still doesn't do what I want it to do, which is what GB-PVR did. In GB-PVR, Auto would use the settings that I put in Config.xml. In NPVR, it ignores my settings and just does whatever it thinks it ought to be, which on my system is almost never right.

Can you make it work like GB-PVR did? Also, if you make it work the way GB-PVR did, then I'd MUCH prefer to have it always switch back to Auto. Perhaps it could be configurable?

[mvallevand]

Why do you use 'remote letterbox'? Do you prefer to stretch the 4:3 middle part of the picture to stretch to fill the screen? The resulting aspect ratio would be wrong, but I know some people prefer this - so it would be a totally valid reason to want it.

I have to because Auto for SD content from the HD PVR that is 720p can be both letter and pillar boxed if the source was 16:9

Martin

[b00sfuk]

First thing to check it is that it is correctly storing the current aspect ration in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\NPVR\LastAspectRatio.

Wow, lots of posts since I last looked and no easy overall solution by the look of it.

I still cannot get this to work and the registry is being updated with the correct last aspect ratio, it just resets to AUTO every time I start a new video. As it is working for others though and things might have moved on I'll keep playing to see if I've done something wrong: Also I guess things might move on.

One thing I remember from GBPVR is that AR behaves differently depending on whether the video decoder is specified explicitly or is left at System Default (I use the latter to solve this problem). Could this be why some are seeing different behaviour to GBPVR?

I'm also thinking that it might solve most problems if we could have a specific default setting for AR in the config.xml file in addition to the range of defined ARs? I.E. you could specify if you wanted to start each viewing in AUTO (default) or FILL or LAST-AR mode (or any other specified).

[sub]

Wow, lots of posts since I last looked and no easy overall solution by the look of it.

I still cannot get this to work and the registry is being updated with the correct last aspect ratio, it just resets to AUTO every time I start a new video. As it is working for others though and things might have moved on I'll keep playing to see if I've done something wrong: Also I guess things might move on.

The patch seems to be working for others, so I suspect you didnt install it right. Did you check that registry setting is being created, and updated every time you press F7? If not, then the patch is not installed.

One thing I remember from GBPVR is that AR behaves differently depending on whether the video decoder is specified explicitly or is left at System Default (I use the latter to solve this problem). Could this be why some are seeing different behaviour to GBPVR?

'Auto' never worked in GBPVR if you left the decoder on 'System Default'. The same scenario doesnt exist in NPVR, because it's not possible to leave the decoder on 'system default' - you either explicitly pick a decoder, or it's disabled.

[b00sfuk]

The patch seems to be working for others, so I suspect you didnt install it right. Did you check that registry setting is being created, and updated every time you press F7? If not, then the patch is not installed.

Playing with it at the moment. Really weird as the registry entry is updating every time I press F7 but if I stop the recording then start it again, the entry & screen are immediately set back to AUTO. Nothing in the logs that might help as it just says what the source aspect ratio is of the file. I shall not worry about it as the solution works and I'll be reinstalling when I move to NPVR so hope it would be OK then.

Also it looks like it does not solve everybody's problem so I guess it might change (any thoughts yet on having a default startup aspect ratio as a configurable option e.g defaults to AUTO but can be overridden in the config.xml with FILL or LAST-AR)?

thanks again

[johnsonx42]

(any thoughts yet on having a default startup aspect ratio as a configurable option e.g defaults to AUTO but can be overridden in the config.xml with FILL or LAST-AR)?

That's what I'd like to see, particularly if Auto can be fixed so it works like GB-PVR.

[mvallevand]

I would prefer this as a config.xml setting much more than a last viewed setting.

Martin