Anamorphic Widescreen Issues

[CCoug83]

I have been encoding Divx Videos for quite a while (more than 3 years). About 6 months ago I purchased a Philips DVP-642 DVD player that has performed magnificently! However, I have always used playback on a normal 4:3 Sony Wega television. About 2 weeks ago I purchased a 16:9 Syntax 27" LCD widescreen TV with high expectations. However when playing the Divx movies on this TV, they are stretched horizontally with black lines on top and bottom still! Obviously when played in 4:3 mode on the TV they have the normal aspect ration, but then I have black lines on top, bottom, and the sides, which cuts down the size of my TV significantly. DVD's on the other hand play fine and fit the screen with no black lines.

After reading up on some on-line sources I found some information on anamorphic widescreen and figured that must be the problem. I figured my Divx Videos must not be anamorphic. I'd pretty much given up on the TV and figuring out if it could display them correctly, and stumbled upon some info. I downloaded a program called MPEG4 Modifier, which I've read can correct this issue, and tried converting an AVI file. I have a few test sources with 512x288 and 720x304 resolution DIVX files and the program said it was "square pixel". I tried to conversions, once with the 16:9 NTSC PAR selected and once with the 16:9 DAR selected and burned them both onto CD to try out on the Philips player. I had no success. They looked the same as the original and have the same aspect ratio.

Any information anyone could provide me with would be of great help. I really like this new TV, but if it can't play my DIVX videos it is honestly of no use to me. The TV also has no stretching features such as Panorama or Cinema, so figuring this out is my only option. Thank you in advance for any help you can provide me.

[jggimi]

Unfortunately, those of us who own DivX players based on the ESS Vibrato chipsets are stuck with players that don't know how to display all sources properly on 16:9 TVs. My JVC player has this same chip, and does the same thing on my 16:9 TV.

AVIs were designed to display with square pixels, for playback on square pixel PCs. DVDs have Display Aspect Ratio (DAR) flags that can be set to 4:3 or 16:9, but this is lacking with standard AVI files.

There are other containers that support aspect ratio flags, such as Matroska. And there are tools like MPEG4Mediator that can add aspect ratio flags to AVI files; but unfortunately, our standalone players can't do .mkv files nor support flags from tools like MPEG4Mediator.

You can do what I do: Adjust the aspect ratio on your TV to 4:3, and zoom in.

[multicone]

What resolution are you operating your 16:9 monitor with ? Dont forget not all video cards allw setting of 16:9 pixel resolutions. My Nvidia onboard video chip ( GForce 2 ) just can do that after updating to the very latest driver, now i can set 960 x 600 as output resolution, and all my 16:9 movies look fine on my 16:9 TV with S-VGA input.

[jggimi]

Multicone, CCoug83 is using a standalone player with a 16:9 TV.

[Shinigami-Sama]

hmmm
I've seen a few of those "media converters" that change a a/v>coax/s-vid ect.
that can make a tv display a vidoe right
they;er just a little box that you plug hte output of the x-player to teh thing and plughte thing to the tv
and it doesn't hurt hte picture oddly enough
last I heard a samll comapny made them that almost whent under
I'll have to ask my friend about them but he's never around so it could take awhile so I'll try to remember to ask next time I see him

oh one note
have you tried resizething the avi to match the proportional pixals of the anamorphic?
I've heard of peopel doinghtat before

[gircobain]

What if you chose "16:9" as TV Display under Video Setup off DVP642 system menu?
Doesn't that fix it?
I have one as well and thinking of buying a widescreen tv, would hate to find out that my avi's get stretched when playing :(

[SeeMoreDigital]

Shingami-Sama,

In all honesty, I very much doubt a little black box is going to solve CCoug83's situation. Especially when the cost of such a device is compared to the cost of the player.

As jggimi pointed out, the primary problem is with the ESS chip-set and how it's been programmed to respond to 16:9 square pixel (and anamorphic pixel) frame sized encodes!

Hopefully the situation can be rectified with an firmware update but talking about it here is only the first step. What player owners need to do is inform Philips!


Cheers

[CCoug83]

You know what? That is a brilliant idea. I have done tons of searching around the internet and posting to try and see if anyone knows a solution. I never thought about e-mailing Philips with the issue and maybe they'll make a firmware update. Brilliant!

Anyone else who owns this player and a widescreen TV, please join me in e-mailing philips so it's not just one person and maybe they'll include it in the next firmware update.