SageTV on 720p TV - removing bars

[aclarke]

Hi. I had SageTV running great on my old tube TV but a few months ago bought a 42" 1080x720 TV. We moved and also bought an HD tuner with Star Choice satellite in Canada.

Leaving aside the HD channels for now as that's a different issue, how do I successfully play back shows on my new TV? The problem is that the the SD channels come in in 4:3 format, with bars at the top and bottom for widescreen shows as normal. When played back on SageTV/Windows XP, I now get bars left, right, top & bottom as I would if I was just watching TV.

However, on TV I can hit a "zoom" button to fix this problem somewhat. When displaying my computer screen via DVI cable, the zoom button doesn't do anything. I'd think there should be some sort of SageTV or third party customization that can remove the aspect ratio bars so that the actual video can be zoomed to full screen.

Is this possible?

Thanks,
- Andrew.

[Menehune]

Are you using a sage client? Extender? Sage has a setting to "preserve aspect ratio" when it displays a file. That may change the 16:9 program to show correctly on the monitor. I can't verify that since I'm viewing SD 4:3 content on my 16:9 monitor.

[aclarke]

Hi, thanks for your response. I'm playing back files directly from Sage 6.3.10.166 onto my 42" LCD at 1280x720.

I guess what I need is some way to remove letter/picture/window boxing automatically, so that the actual video can be zoomed to as close to full-screen as possible. Right now when viewing 16:9 content from an SD on my 16:9 monitor, I have letterboxing added by the satellite company to turn the 16:9 content into 4:3. Then SageTV takes that 4:3 content (with letterboxing) and displays it with pillarboxing so that in the end I have a border along all 4 sides.

I just want to get rid of the borders and zoom the image up to full-screen as much as possible.

Thanks,
- Andrew.

[briands]

Go through the SAGE configuration wizard (general and user interface options) to make sure you have the correct aspect ration set.

Then make sure your TV is set to normal and you should be able to use the aspect ratio switch to handle this pillar box in pillar box.