Resolution Settings ??

[Netdawg]

I've been using SageTV for a year now and I really like it. I have a dedicated server with two SDTV capture cards connected to two HD Comcast STB. I playback using an HD200 connected to a 50" plasma. I am always having to hit the aspect button on the HD200 remote to get the picture to fill the screen. When setting up the HD200, I saw a resolution setting. I set it pretty high. I think there are other settings in the server setup that deal with resolution. The ultimate goal is to eventually get an HD-PVR rather than SDTV capture cards. How can things up so that I'm not constantly changing the aspect ratio? Any ideas?

[stanger89]

You can change the default aspect ratio from the aspect ratio option in the Options menu while watching something.

[KeithAbbott]

Why not leave the aspect ratio alone and watch the show in 4:3 like it is intended to be? Stretching a 4:3 picture to use the full width of the screen seems silly to me. I'm cracking up a little bit thinking about watching the Victoria Secret Fashion show stretched, make all of those supermodels really look like the girls next door...

[gtfreymann]

I installed the auto aspect ratio plugin (there are two, I think the second one in the list worked for me).

From there, when watching TV, I set the aspect ratio settings for 4:30 to 125% and 125%.

This leaves a small black area on our 42" LCD TV on the left and right margins, while zooming in the 4:3 video stream enough to help almost fill the screen.

With this setting we are still able to read captions on the bottom of the screen and aren't using the "fill" option which stretches and makes people look weird.

With the auto ratio plugin, I then tell it to use the adjusted 4:3 ratio settings for anything played/recorded off our capture cards and we never have to fiddle with the aspect ratio again...

Except for on the HD300 extender. I don't know why but it behaves completely differently. We have to use the remote and toggle the aspect button to make it work.

Our computer clients work perfectly. Go figure.

[Netdawg]

Luckily, I don't watch a lot of Victoria Secrets super models. It is interesting to think of them like the girls next door. In general, I just don't like the idea of having a super cool 50" TV and only filling half of the screen with a picture even though the aspect ratio is maintained with respect to the source. I guess the best answer is to spend the bucks for HD capture. The the source resolution might be higher and I'll fill the screen with high resolution video. I'll look at the aspect ratio plugin. I'm sure I'll eventually move to the HD300. So, I don't want to install something that's going to give me issues down the road. I have the software to upgrade to v7, but pretty nervous about such because I don't have the time to troubleshoot if there are issues. As with everything, I'm sure there will be issues.