View Full Version : Aspect ratio with 4:3 material on 16:9 TV
when i watch 4:3 material on my xbox running pal60/pal50 (depending on material) i get a stretched picture. this has not worked for me since xbmp.
the correct thing would be to produce black bars at the sides of the picture, so that it is displayed in 4:3 even on 16:9 tvs.
i can not adjust this on the tv, since when using the rgb connector the scaling is turned off (sync is used directly from the rgb connector bypassing the analog pll that does the scaling normally). ive really tried and asked in the forums, and nowone seems to be able to help me on this. should i preport it as a bug?
Gamester17
2004-06-10, 14:27
i don't think this bug, but by design or setting. hopefully someone else can confirm this and give a better explaination on why/how it is(?)
ive really tried all settings i could possibly find
if 4:3 material is displayed without black on the sides on a 16:9 configured player, it seems like a bug to me. :rolleyes:
if you have a 16:9 tv and you've told xbmc that you have a 16:9 tv set, plus you've set the option in xbmc to autoswitch for widescreen then for 4:3 material your tv should switch itself to 4:3 mode, in this case it's your tv that should add the black bars on either side (assuming that xbmc is sending the correct widescreen switching signal down the scart cable).
however if you've told xbmc that you have a 16:9 tv but disabled auto widescreen switching, then in this case the tv should always remain in 16:9 mode (ie anamoprhic display), it is then xbmc's job to add the black bars on either side and to resize to display it in 16:9 mode.
both of these options are working ok for me. can you clarify which one isn't working for you?
my tv does not switch when running rgb input, it always produces the stretched picture (16:9). i thought it was the player that were supposed to add the black on the sides and not the tv. my mistake then...
unfortunately this does not solve my problem :tear: even though i realize that its not primary caused by xbmc but because my tv dont adapt, its more of a feature request than a bug then.
thanks for the answer
are you sure your tv can't autoswitch? whatever hardware you have, ie dvd players, cable boxes, satellite boxes should all send the widescreen signal down your scart cables and your tv should pick this up and switch accordingly. as long as you have your boxes setup correctly. when watching tv doesn't it auto switch between 4:3 and 16:9 depending on what your watching?
however make sure you have set the display setting in xbmc to 16:9 and also disable auto widescreen switching, xbmc should then add the black bars for you if your playing 4:3 material and your tv will remain in 16:9 mode (which it seems stuck on anyway).
nfree - i have the same problem, my cheapy goodmans 28" tv doesn't honour 4:3 rgb sources. however, i've just discovered that disabling "auto widescreen switching" in settings -> my video settings fixes the problem within xbmc. my 4:3 simpsons rips, 16:9 24 rips, and 2.35:1 kill bill rip all played at the correct sizes. i also disabled "zoom" while i was in there, that might have some bearing on whether this will work for you or not.
deltop - thanks for the tip about auto widescreen switching, that had been driving me mad! you're right, i think, it's mine and nfree's tvs that are broken, not xbmc, but at least xbmc lets us work around the problem. now if only the xbox dvd player would play ball my futurama dvds wouldn't be all stretched. i might have to xvid them just so i can watch them properly. grrr.
i guess there might be some quality loss from doing this, although it's probably much less annoying that watching fat people.
auto widescreen switching changes nothing for me, because it just sets the widescreen pin in the scart which is not correctly handled by my tv in rgb mode. its an expensive 16:9 32"/100hz tv, so it is anoying.
i cant even watch another channel when there is an input on the rgb signals in the scart. when available, the syncs are always used from rgb input.
everything works fine with svhs input in the scart, but rgb looks so much better.