OTA 16:9 content on 4:3 SD TV

[pknowles]

I just hooked up my HDHR to my roof antenna to get OTA content. The problem is displaying the mix of 16:9 and 4:3 content on my 4:3 SDTV. Is there a way to scale the picture vertically so the the sides of the 16:9 broadcasting get cut off and the 4:3 content would basically be untouched (since it already fills the vertical span of the picture)? Thanks.

[Tiki]

I'm not sure why you would want to chop off the sides, but you can do it by changing the aspect ratio settings in Sage. It's a manual thing, so you will have to hit a button to switch the aspect ratio depending on what you are watching.

The aspect ratio settings work a little differently depending on whether you are playing back on an extender or if you have your TV connected to a PC running Sage or Sage Client.

If you hit the "options" button during playback, you get a pop-up and one of the buttons is to change aspect ratio.

If you have an extender, there is a button on the remote for "toggle aspect ratio".

If you are using some other remote, you can program one of the buttons to "toggle aspect ratio".

You just have to adjust the settings for one of the aspect ratios until it displays the way you like it. Then you can hit the toggle aspect ratio button to switch view settings depending on what show you are watching.

One other thought... I think there used to be an STVi add-on called Automatic Aspect Ratio Switcher - you might want to search for it in the customizations forums - it may do what you want automatically...

[pknowles]

Originally Posted by Tiki

I'm not sure why you would want to chop off the sides, but you can do it by changing the aspect ratio settings in Sage. It's a manual thing, so you will have to hit a button to switch the aspect ratio depending on what you are watching.

The aspect ratio settings work a little differently depending on whether you are playing back on an extender or if you have your TV connected to a PC running Sage or Sage Client.

If you hit the "options" button during playback, you get a pop-up and one of the buttons is to change aspect ratio.

If you have an extender, there is a button on the remote for "toggle aspect ratio".

If you are using some other remote, you can program one of the buttons to "toggle aspect ratio".

You just have to adjust the settings for one of the aspect ratios until it displays the way you like it. Then you can hit the toggle aspect ratio button to switch view settings depending on what show you are watching.

One other thought... I think there used to be an STVi add-on called Automatic Aspect Ratio Switcher - you might want to search for it in the customizations forums - it may do what you want automatically...

Sorry for the lack of detail, I'm playing back content straight off the server. I've connected the server to the TV using the s-video connection displaying in 640x480 since it's a SDTV.

I want to chop off the sides because when 4:3 content is broadcast in 16:9 there are black bars on all sides of the screen (normal bars on top and bottom and the broadcast black bar on the sides). Most of the aspect ratio options I had played with would not maintain the aspect ratio of the images, basically it would stretch them one way to fill the screen making the content look distorted. I'll check out STVi or even changing the aspect ratio through the options menu.

Hopefully I'll upgrade my TV soon so this won't be an issue, but there always seems to be some other priority that comes along. Thank you.

[paulbeers]

Here's the one issue with doing what you are requesting, if you figure out how to do this Sage will only use what is in the middle of the screen, but shows shot in 16:9 utilize the whole screen so you will lose anything that was shot on those "sides". Heck, most shows now that are shot in 16:9 add black bars to the top and bottom of the screen when they are re-broadcasted in 4:3 just so they don't lose this very valuable screen real estate. Movies that are converted to 4:3 use "pan and scan" so that the focus of every frame is on the tv, this means that the part you see is not always dead center, but sometimes to the left or to the right.. Sage will not be able to differentiate between what is important and would only give you the center. Imagine watching a show where two guys are in a gun fight at opposite "edges" of the screen and all you get to watch is bullets passing by and not who or where they come from since both figures have been cropped out.

[Tiki]

When they insert the black bars on the top and bottom of the screeen (usually to display 16x9 content on a 4x3 screen) it is called "letter-boxing". When they insert the bars on the left and right (usually to display 4x3 content on a 16x9 screen) it is called "pillar-boxing."

Sometimes you get a situation where both letter-boxes and pillar-boxes are shown at the same time (window-boxing). This is usually the case when you are watching widescreen content that is being broadcast on an SD channel and you are playing it back on a 16x9 screen. This can be annoying and is one situation where I understand people wanting to zoom and crop the picture.

If you are playing back directly from a video card in the Sage PC, then go to Detailed Setup -> Multimedia and look for the first two options (Aspect Ratio Mode and Aspect Ratio Settings). First set the aspect ratio mode to the one that you want to adjust, then modify the Aspect Ratio settings for that mode.

Sage gives you 4 settings (Fill, Source, 4x3 and 16x9). Normally, I leave Aspect Ratio Mode set to "Source" so that it doesn't attempt to stretch or crop the picture. You can tweak the settings for 4x3 or 16x9 to get the effect that you want. You will have to do a little trial and error to get the desired results (try something like 133% stretch).

[hedly]

Yeah...this is my big gripe for SD content on digital channels. we still have a 4:3 CRT (at least until around fathers day), and shows that are 4:3 have black around all four sides. So the shows look really small.

I have tried the four zoom settings in sage and none of them produce a good solution. I will try the video card settings, but I think I looked a while ago with no avail.

[pknowles]

Hedly, I found "Automatic Aspect Ratio Switcher" add on which allows you to mark certain channels with certain aspect ratio's. I set everything to Source and the digital channels I have issue with, I mark as 16:9 with 125% scaling. That gets rid of most of the black lines and when 16:9 content comes on it only clips off a small portion of the sides.

[hedly]

Originally Posted by pknowles

Hedly, I found "Automatic Aspect Ratio Switcher" add on which allows you to mark certain channels with certain aspect ratio's. I set everything to Source and the digital channels I have issue with, I mark as 16:9 with 125% scaling. That gets rid of most of the black lines and when 16:9 content comes on it only clips off a small portion of the sides.

Most interesting...I will try to find it. Thanks for the input.

[blade]

It's been so long since I've used the PC client that I don't recall much about the aspect ratios, but for my extenders I created a custom aspect ratio to remove unwanted bars from shows that have black bars on all 4 sides. Then I use the auto aspect ratio switcher to automatically change the ratio.

[pknowles]

Originally Posted by blade

It's been so long since I've used the PC client that I don't recall much about the aspect ratios, but for my extenders I created a custom aspect ratio to remove unwanted bars from shows that have black bars on all 4 sides. Then I use the auto aspect ratio switcher to automatically change the ratio.

Yeah, I keep on debating moving to an extender. I here about channel switching delay's and running directly off my server the channels switch slow enough already. I keep on thinking that using an extender on a future HDTV purchase would give me more life out of my server, but my server is so ancient I think I will just build a whole new server and run off of that.

[blade]

Originally Posted by pknowles

Yeah, I keep on debating moving to an extender. I here about channel switching delay's and running directly off my server the channels switch slow enough already. I keep on thinking that using an extender on a future HDTV purchase would give me more life out of my server, but my server is so ancient I think I will just build a whole new server and run off of that.

I wasn't suggesting you get an extender just stating that I don't recall exactly what I did when I ran a PC client. I do remember that I had the aspect ratios set and used the automatic switcher plug-in so that it functioned just like the extender does now.

I don't watch much "Live TV" in Sage, but when I switched I didn't notice any increase in delay. I'm not saying there isn't a delay just that I never noticed it.

Once again I'm not saying you should get an extender, but in my experience it is far better than any PC client I ever had. For me noise is a huge factor and the cost of building a near silent client that still looked nice enough to sit in my living room was far greater than the price of the extender. Running the server in the living room was a definite no, so I required a server and a client of some sort even if I didn't go the extender route.

[hedly]

Originally Posted by blade

For me noise is a huge factor and the cost of building a near silent client that still looked nice enough to sit in my living room was far greater than the price of the extender. .

I hate to hijack this thread, but the computer I built for in the living room was amazingly quiet. The cooler on the graphics card is even an active one.

Check out silentPCreveiw.com; especially for choosing the power supply. I think that is the toughest part since it is not easy to switch out the fan. Case is a thermaltake Mozart (on sale when I got it), although there are some nicer ones now.

...so back to the original thread. Gotta check out that auto aspect switcher add on.

[blade]

Originally Posted by hedly

I hate to hijack this thread, but the computer I built for in the living room was amazingly quiet. The cooler on the graphics card is even an active one.

Check out silentPCreveiw.com; especially for choosing the power supply. I think that is the toughest part since it is not easy to switch out the fan. Case is a thermaltake Mozart (on sale when I got it), although there are some nicer ones now.

Yeah, I don't want to hijack the thread either. I'll just say I frequent silentpcreview and it's a great site. One thing to keep in mind is everyone has different tolerances for what is acceptable noise levels. If I can tell a computer is running just by listening to it from more than a foot or two away it's too loud to put in my living room. The loudest component in my old client was the hard drive and it was rated by silentpcreview as 2nd or 3rd at the time as the quietest available and it was suspended in a sandwich design rig in a 5.25" bay. The seek noise was still not acceptable to me. I know with more modern hardware and SSDs it's much easier to build a near silent PC, but it's still not cheap.

To get back on topic the automatic aspect switcher is a great plug-in. Definitely one of my top 3 favorite plug-ins.