Auto-Widescreen

[NumberFive]

My old Philips Widescreen CRT had a really nice feature were it could automatically detect letterbox bars and would switch aspect ratio automatically to remove them.

I'm fairly sure that this is done by looking for a rectangular area of black (or dark grey) in the central half of the screen. It was unaffected by logos overlapping the letterbox area.

Would it be possible to have a plugin which would say scan 1 frame per second and over a rolling window of 5 seconds make adjustments to the aspect ratio (selecting the closest match from those defined in Config.xml).

A major bonus would be to have such a plugin also scan for pillar box bars in the same way. I've seen a number of stupid DVB-T channels ("Virgin 1" for instance) put a 14:9 programme in a 4:3 frame, then put that into a 16:9 frame. The result being that you have the picture in the middle of a big black box.

In summary, my wish is for a plugin which scans the percentage of black border at each side of the screen and then selects the most appropriate aspect ratio.

[Pob]

My old Philips Widescreen CRT had a really nice feature were it could automatically detect letterbox bars and would switch aspect ratio automatically to remove them.

I'm fairly sure that this is done by looking for a rectangular area of black (or dark grey) in the central half of the screen. It was unaffected by logos overlapping the letterbox area.

Would it be possible to have a plugin which would say scan 1 frame per second and over a rolling window of 5 seconds make adjustments to the aspect ratio (selecting the closest match from those defined in Config.xml).

A major bonus would be to have such a plugin also scan for pillar box bars in the same way. I've seen a number of stupid DVB-T channels ("Virgin 1" for instance) put a 14:9 programme in a 4:3 frame, then put that into a 16:9 frame. The result being that you have the picture in the middle of a big black box.

In summary, my wish is for a plugin which scans the percentage of black border at each side of the screen and then selects the most appropriate aspect ratio.

Personally I dislike any stretching or zooming of the TV picture, so such a plugin would not be for me!
I leave the GBPVR aspect ratio on auto - but you can always use F7 to cycle through the different aspect ratios, or easily program one of your remote buttons to do this.
Good news though - Virgin Media are switching to 'proper' 16:9 broadcast for all the channels they carry (Virgin 1, Dave etc) in January - I think they blamed the delay for this on the cost of replacing equipment...
They seem to have stopped broadcasting Virgin1 in the 'compromise' 14:9 (bars top, bottom, and sides), but instead have been using 4:3, which is a bit better at least.
Pob

[pBS]

I second that request...there are TONS of stuff here with bars on all 4 sides...grrr... not to mention 16:9 material broadcast in 4:3 with bars added,then played on a 16:9 tv...need to zoom both directions to remove Needless black borders..
and i have a feeling this won't change for a couple of years...makes absolutely no sense for anyone..4/3 and 16/9 are both screwed for no reason...

i had one with a 16/9 content, borders added on top/bottom to make 4/3, then side borders added to make it 16/9 again, then top/bottom AGAIN to make 4/3, then space on sides so it could be broadcast on a 16/9 channel...!!!!!!

basically surrounded by 2 complete 4 sided boxes...grrrr!
when they could have just omitted ALL borders as it's 16/9 on 16/9 channel..
that's just retarded!!
makes me think it's an automated process....

[NumberFive]

I personally dislike people who quote entire forum posts, but then thats just my personal preference.

Anyway, the point I was getting at, which pBS gets, is that this plugin would remove unnecessary letterbox / pillarbox bars that do nothing to preserve the original aspect ratio.

I personally prefer the way the BBC operates its satellite services - 4:3 material in a 4:3 frame, 16:9 in a 16:9 frame. Ultimately I'd like GBPVR to output the same way automatically, but the BBC for some bizarre reason puts 4:3 material in a 16:9 frame (with pillarbox bars) on DVB-T. GBPVR sees the 16:9 flag and outputs a 16:9 frame.

[pBS]

unfortunately here, atsc land, i believe it's mandated that all digital be transmitted 16:9..[at least by '09] and most do it now...i get only 1 out of 30 channels transmitted that way...and i think it's cuz they're poor and have outdated equipment..[local independant non-network affiliate,half the time shopping channel]

but i tripped when 'Conan' changed resolution *and* aspect, right in the middle of his monlog! lol no idea what happened there.. hasn't happened since..[went from full 1080i to 720p-letterboxed, verified cuz i taped it..]

lots of the content on hd is wayy poorly compressed...one wonders what they're saving the bandwidth for? it's antenna!! they're not using the 5 or more extra channels they could use with the kind of compression and letterboxing on current 'hd' channels they use..my sd satt box looks way better than sd content on hd channels with box removed..[zoomed or not]

seems like lots of work to do on their end before we really see the fruits of the Digital-HD Age consistantly...for now it's hit and miss on the broadcast side...some fabulous 1080i, some worse than the old coat hanger...

[herbs]

In summary, my wish is for a plugin which scans the percentage of black border at each side of the screen and then selects the most appropriate aspect ratio.

Don't hold me to this but I believe in freeview in the UK uses a broadcast flag that tells set top boxes,tvs etc to zoom in on such broadcasts. Now I'm sure if we give a ts sample of this to sub he might be able to implement this.

[NumberFive]

I have a large amount of server space. Tell me what to do and I shall make it so!

[herbs]

I'm afriad thats upto sub if he wishes to do it, but if he dioes then you need to provide a transport stream with something tsreader or dvbdream.

[mvallevand]

In the mpeg stream this is called WSS wide-screen-signaling. Not all broadcasts have it, but it is useful and I know mvpmc supports it. I don't know if it can be muxed in after the fact, although I don't see why not.

Martin