A question of ratios (Elta mainly)

[oddball]

I have a widescreen TV. I have my stand alone DVD player set to widescreen TV output. This means that when a DVD is played that is anamorphic it fills the screen on 1.85:1 and has smaller black bars on wider material giving the correct ratio automatically. If I play a letterbox DVD that is not anamorphic I have to zoom the TV in order to playback with correct ratio.

Now what I want to know is if I get an Elta and set it to widescreen output, will it playback DiVX/XviD movies that are letterbox (But had the black borders cropped during the encode) as a fake anamorphic zoom? Or it will it display letterbox with cropped borders with black boarders regardless?

On my PC I usually have to force anamorphic squeeze in the player software which makes it look wrong on the PC monitor but correct on TV out to my widescreen TV (I used to have this done automatically with a Matrox G400 dual head but had to 'upgrade' to an Nvidia card when I upgraded the motherboard losing such a feature).

[Zhnujm]

For the 8882 and 8883 its like this:
Set the player to 4:3 and you have to use the zoom of the tv, set it to widescreen and the player streches the picture to 16:9.

[oddball]

Sounds sweet :)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Zhnujm
For the 8882 and 8883 its like this:
Set the player to 4:3 and you have to use the zoom of the tv, set it to widescreen and the player streches the picture to 16:9. Have you bothered trying the PAL encodes on my web site with your player?

Cheers

[Zhnujm]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
Have you bothered trying the PAL encodes on my web site with your player?


Yes. ;)

Player set to 4:3
1+2 - picture to high, tv set to "widescreen" (the files are not resized for square pixels, i think)
3+4 - correct aspect ratio, tv set to "zoom"

Player set to 16:9, tv to "widescreen"
1 - picture gets letterboxed to the left+right, and the picture is much to high
2 - picture much to high
3 - picture gets letterboxed to the left+right,correct aspect ratio
4 - correct aspect ratio

[SeeMoreDigital]

Thanks Zhnujm,

Well that's nearly what I thought would happen!

When 4:3 TV output is selected: -
1 - should display just about the correct AR
2 - should be just a little high

Both were encoded using square pixels...

When 16:9 TV output is selected: -
All the encodes performed as expected

I have to ask. Is there really no option within the Elta 8883 settings (or MT chipset players) to manually adjust the AR of encodes during playback?


Cheers

[Zhnujm]

Are you sure 1+2 uses square pixel ? The picture size should be 720x400 then.
Seems to me that only the black bars are cropped.

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
I have to ask. Is there really no option within the Elta 8883 settings (or MT chipset players) to manually adjust the AR of encodes during playback?

No such option until now, maybe they change this later.
AFAIK only some Sigma based players can resize x+y axis independently.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Zhnujm
Are you sure 1+2 uses square pixel ? The picture size should be 720x400 then. Well, as you can see from the file information the encodes should have been encoded with square pixels...

01 - FAR=720x576(1.25.1) PAR=720x432(1.66.1) Anamorphic with Mattes

02 - FAR=720x432(1.66.1) PAR=720x432(1.66.1) Anamorphic with Mattes cropped

Encode 01 displays okay for me when 4:3 TV output is selected on my 16:9 PAL TV!

Maybe some other people could check encodes 1 and 2 out, using both PAL and NTSC TV's?

Cheers

[Zhnujm]

Well, maybe "square pixels" is not the perfect name for it, as the elta stretches the height a bit to corret the pixel aspect ratio you also have to resize if you want an anamorphic encode, lets say you crop 72 pixels top+bottom ->432 then you have to resize it down to 400 to get a correct ar.
As the elta sees every encode as 4:3 with square pixels you have to fool it a bit to get a correct anamorphic file.

But i would expect files 1+2 to look the same, both have the same vertical (viewable) height.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Zhnujm
Well, maybe "square pixels" is not the perfect name for it, as the elta stretches the height a bit to corret the pixel aspect ratio you also have to resize if you want an anamorphic encode, lets say you crop 72 pixels top+bottom ->432 then you have to resize it down to 400 to get a correct ar.
As the elta sees every encode as 4:3 with square pixels you have to fool it a bit to get a correct anamorphic file.

But i would expect files 1+2 to look the same, both have the same vertical (viewable) height. Yep I see!

Agreed both encodes do display the same quantity of vertical image/picture pixels. Encode 01 just adds the 144 vertical matte/black pixels, (72 top, 72 bottom).

I would have thought encode 01 should play OK though. It does for me!

Cheers

EDIT: Are you saying that the Elta has a built in 'Vertical Scaling' function?

[Zhnujm]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
EDIT: Are you saying that the Elta has a built in 'Vertical Scaling' function?

I think i dont know what you mean with that :confused::D
I try to explain what i mean, lets say i have a full-screen file with 640x480, if the player would resize both x+y the same amount it would end with 720x540 wich would not fill the screen so the player has to resize vertical a bit more to 720x576.
So if you now have a file that is only cropped, the player would also resize vertical and so you have picture that is too high.

[len0x]

Originally posted by Zhnujm

No such option until now, maybe they change this later.
AFAIK only some Sigma based players can resize x+y axis independently.

So it's not such a bad chip after all ? :)
I'm impressed by LiteOn ability of display any encode in proper AR with manual adjustments.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by len0x
So it's not such a bad chip after all ? :)
I'm impressed by LiteOn ability of display any encode in proper AR with manual adjustments. Agreed!

I understand peoples reluctance to like 'all things Sigma' (because of their previous run-in with XviD over their codec) but.... I'm afraid there's no way I would buy an Mpeg4/DVD standalone player if it can't offer manual adjustment of the PAR!

As it would seem that the MediaTek chipset/players can't offer this function, I'll be looking forward to see how well the new Sigma 'ASP' chipset players fair.

Cheers