NFL network - black bars

[Telecore]

When I watch a game on the NFL network with SageTV using my Ceton InfiniTV 6 PCIe tuner, the picture is always partially cropped with black bars above and below. If I tune in the same game on my Nvidia Shield using the HDHomerun View app using the HDHR Prime, there are no bars and I can see the whole picture, although sometimes some commercials are cropped. Anyone have any idea what is going on here?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by Telecore

When I watch a game on the NFL network with SageTV using my Ceton InfiniTV 6 PCIe tuner, the picture is always partially cropped with black bars above and below. If I tune in the same game on my Nvidia Shield using the HDHomerun View app using the HDHR Prime, there are no bars and I can see the whole picture, although sometimes some commercials are cropped. Anyone have any idea what is going on here?

Probably a difference in how Sage and the HDHRView app deal with aspect ratios that are "odd". I used to get this all the time. Try the ActiveAspectsRatio plugin. It allows you to dynamically map different video ARs to Sage display modes.

You need to edit your comskip.ini to make comskip produce .aspects files. Add "output_aspects=1" and set "verbose" to 10.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by Telecore

When I watch a game on the NFL network with SageTV using my Ceton InfiniTV 6 PCIe tuner, the picture is always partially cropped with black bars above and below. If I tune in the same game on my Nvidia Shield using the HDHomerun View app using the HDHR Prime, there are no bars and I can see the whole picture, although sometimes some commercials are cropped. Anyone have any idea what is going on here?

There are a lot of possible reasons for this and we would need more info to help.

First, I would make sure you are really talking about the same channel - I get 2 NFL channels - one is HD and one is SD. They transmit in different resolutions and different aspect ratios.

Next, I would consider the displays. Are you playing back on the same display? What type of display are you using (TV, monitor, tablet, phone)? What is the native resolution of the display? Does the display have some built in aspect ratio controls and how are they set?

Next I would take a look at the metadata for the recording. It will tell you the format that it thinks the file was recorded in. If the aspect ratio of the recording doesn’t match your display, you will either get black bars or a stretched picture.

If you are recording from a cable card tuner, you usually get exactly what the cable company is transmitting. However, Sage can’t work directly with a CC tuners - you need another piece of software to act as a middleman - probably OpenDCT. OpenDCT can be configured to record shows unaltered, or it can remux the stream, or it can do a full transcode. If you configure it to do a full transcode, it could change the resolution, and possibly the aspect ratio. So I would check to see how it’s configured to make sure it isn’t altering your recording somehow.

[Telecore]

Thanks for the replies - ironically I don't see any more games scheduled on the NFL network this season but they were re-broadcasting a game and it still has the same issues. I recorded this game and mediainfo indicates that it is a 1920x1080 (16:9) 29.970 FPS MPEG-2 stream. Meanwhile I see that the SageTV miniclient does not exhibit the problem, neither does the PC Client, so it appears to be limited to the HD-300.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by Telecore

Thanks for the replies - ironically I don't see any more games scheduled on the NFL network this season but they were re-broadcasting a game and it still has the same issues. I recorded this game and mediainfo indicates that it is a 1920x1080 (16:9) 29.970 FPS MPEG-2 stream. Meanwhile I see that the SageTV miniclient does not exhibit the problem, neither does the PC Client, so it appears to be limited to the HD-300.

Ok, so this problem only happens when playing back to a tv through the hd300?

I assume the tv you are connected to is a modern hdtv with 16:9 aspect ratio?

In that case, I would start looking at aspect ratio settings, both in your tv’s menus and in the Sage Hd300 menus.

[sic0048]

If it is limited to the HD300, I would review the settings in the HD300. Perhaps the aspect ratio or resolution is set incorrectly on this hardware device.