Widescreen switching from video card?

[oddball]

Is it possible to send widescreen switching from a video card? Using S-Video here and I know it's possible by a line 21 signal being sent. But was wondering if this is possible from a Nvidia card like my current GeForce 6600GT. In fact shouldn't there be something in the spec for MPEG4 to send a widescreen switching signal?

[neo75903]

i am not sure through the S-video, I have a customized resolution to connect my projector to. My videocard is a GeForce 4200, so i presume your card should be able to do so.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Nope you can't!

And especailly not with Mpeg4 in .AVI or even Mpeg4 in .MP4 :eek:


Cheers

[oddball]

Pretty dumb don't you think? With HDTV's etc you'd think they would have sorted this out by now.

[Doom9]

well, PCs do not know about widescreen, they only know 1:1 DAR. Considering that your PC screen resolution doesn't match the TV resolution, you cannot really determine when a widescreen signal would have to be sent. Imagine you have a sub-DVD resolution DVDrip that still uses 16:9 signalling... it's resolution is below TV output resolution. What do you do with that? Unstretch, then resize to TV resolution? Or, stretch to TV resolution and signal as 16:9? And what with resolutions > TV resolution? Downsize non anamorphic content anamorphically? What about anamorphic content then? The video driver knows nothing about the AR of whatever you play on your PC, so how would it be able to make a proper decision?

[oddball]

Well if DVD's being played from the TV out they should auto switch. I am talking about TV out only here. Anything encoded could have a manual switching flag added to the encode that a re-written decoder could send to the TV out (If it was capable). This really is a design issue that should have been implemented into video cards with TV out long ago!

[neo75903]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
Nope you can't!


think u understood me wrong, i have set the resolution of my videocard in which it matches the resolution of my beamer. It works fine when playing fullscreen with 16:9 material. 4:3 material are being displayed with two vertical bars left and right of the screen.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by oddball
Well if DVD's being played from the TV out they should auto switch. I am talking about TV out only here. Anything encoded could have a manual switching flag added to the encode that a re-written decoder could send to the TV out (If it was capable). This really is a design issue that should have been implemented into video cards with TV out long ago! Not necessarily!

Take European DVB satellite transmissions for instance. They require the DAR (WSS) signal to be sent via pin 08 of the scart. So if you're not connecting by scart, your screen does not know what to do!

The same can be said with many DVD players!

If I connect my stand-alone DVD player directly to my 16:9 TV via either composite, s-video or component video, everything works fine when spinning 16:9 anamorphic DVD's. However, if I spin a 4:3 DVD, I will have to "manually" adjust my 16:9 TV picture to 4:3.

On the other hand, if I connect my stand-alone DVD player directly to my 16:9 TV via RGB scart, the DVD's DAR signalling pulses can be detected by my 16:9 TV and the picture "pings" in and out perfectly!


Cheers

[oddball]

Yes I know about pin 8 of SCART. But for S-Video line 21 is what is available. And you could always route it via a box that does send pin 8 like a stand alone DVD recorder ;)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by oddball
Yes I know about pin 8 of SCART. But for S-Video line 21 is what is available. And you could always route it via a box that does send pin 8 like a stand alone DVD recorder ;) This is true!

You will still have to determine whether you chosen software media player supports WSS via "line 21" and if your video card does too!

Not all do.... And not all look at the same data. Remember, depending on where you are in the world, "line 21" can be used to carry more information than just WSS.


Cheers

[Doom9]

Well if DVD's being played from the TV out they should auto switch. I am talking about TV out only here. Anything encoded could have a manual switching flag added to the encode that a re-written decoder could send to the TV out (If it was capable). This really is a design issue that should have been implemented into video cards with TV out long ago!So you're saying as driver maker I have to check which application is running, grab its overlay, determine if it has been anamorphically encoded, make a copy from the source (I presume TV outs take the material from the VGA output and scale it) which may or may not be accessible somewhere in the memory, scale that to TV output resolution and send only that to the TV output? I pity the poor programmers who have to even think about programming that.

And of course, do the same for every player software and any kind of input. Uff, I'm really glad it's not me.

[oddball]

Erm no. You did not read what I said. *IF* the video card makers made a standard WS switching peice of code then anyone could write it into the encoder/decoder.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Hmmm!

After conducting a brief search, I'm not convinced that "line 21" is used to pass WSS signalling at all.

It seems to be more associated for use with text based systems such as "Closed Captioning" and "subtitling".

Although I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that Philips were using "Line 21" to enable/disable a MacroVision" style encryption system of Digital transmission networks to digital and analogue equipment.

Apparently, this signal caused problems for some UK SkyPlus owners when they tried to record certain BBC TV stations!


Cheers

[Wilbert]

After conducting a brief search, I'm not convinced that "line 21" is used to pass WSS signalling at all.

It seems to be more associated for use with text based systems such as "Closed Captioning" and "subtitling".
Yes, 'Close Captioning' is located on line 21 for NTSC (line 22 for PAL).

For PAL, the WSS is located on line 23 (according to the freely available standard 'EBU ETSI EN 300 294 V1.4.1 - WSS signalling'):

http://www.etsi.org/services_products/freestandard/home.htm

[oddball]

Line 21/23/whatever. But anyhow it should not be a hard thing for video card makers to implement. They can't be bothered and don't like giving out anything for free to developers.