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[Mr ChriZ]

I've currently got my MC center system hooked up to a
widescreen TV (Sony WEGA 28" CRT).
I'm using the S-Video connector on the back of an NVidia GeForce 4 MX 440.
When I start up the system (ie Windows) it fits as if by magic the telly exactly, when the
TV is in Widescreen mode.
The TV has several modes but for general fitting, Widescreen fits best.

However when I try and play a video file in fullscreen in MC
it doesn't fit properly.

I've got several different TV-series that I'm attempting to watch.
x Lost
x Dr Who
x The Triangle

I'm pretty sure these are all filmed in Widescreen rather than cinema scope. (Maybe I'm wrong?)

Telling MC to play in source aspect ratio causes large black bars top and bottom.
The same occurs if you tell MC to play in Widescreen.

However at least when you use these methods you can still see the top and bottom
toolbars (Which are exactly in the right position on the screen).

By switching to another aspect ratio in MC the black bars can be made smaller,
however the toolbars then disapear of the top and bottom of the screen,
making the only possible method of controlling it by keyboard.

MC is set to use desktop resoloution, changing this causes weird and wonderful
effects, or even MC to crash.

Using a combination of incorrect aspect ratios, and the TV's Zoom mode
I can get the picture almost just right, however the toolbars are off the scale,
and totally unreachable. (Lucky I've got a multimedia keyboard!)...

Any thoughts?
Am I doing something quite wrong?

Regards.
Chris.

[JimH]

Have you told MC to use WMP for video playback?

[Mr ChriZ]

I haven't, It's currently turned off.
 I'll try it later to see if it makes any difference.

[Mr ChriZ]

I tried the WMP option and it made no difference.

I then started wondering if it was to do with the desktop resoloution.
The NVidia stuff automatically selects a resoloution of 1024 x 768,
which is not widescreen.  So I'm guessing it just stretches that res
over the entire screen.

I double checked the video files which have a resoloution
of 624x352
624/352 = 1.7777 aprox
as is 16/9, so they are definitley widescreen.

A screen resoloution which is properly widescreen would need to be more like
1024/576.

In the NVidia control panel it allows you to setup custom resoloutions,
so I tried entering this number.  However this caused a panning desktop
whereby to see all of it at once I had to scroll it with the mouse.... most odd....

I'm guessing the problem here is that NVidia/Windows is doing something funny in order to stretch the resoloution.  Will continue to research...

[Mr ChriZ]

I've found something on this from the NVidia Forums:
http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t3586.html

Trying to make sense of it all isn't easy...
From what I can gather tho 1280x720 might work... which is widescreen.
Gonna give it ago!

[Alex B]

"1280 x something" is too much for a S-video connection. 800x600 is usually the best setting for S-Video. If your display driver has a setting for 720x576 or similar you can use that too. (Actually 640x480 doesn't look any different on my 32" wide screen PAL TV). In reality a 576 line PAL display has about 400 lines vertical resolution and 350 in the case of a 480 line NTSC display.

You could try the following:

Make the S-video TV out to be the secondary display in the display driver and use a resolution of 800x600 or 720x576 for this device. Extend the Windows desktop to this display. (I suppose you have also the PC monitor connected as a higher resolution main display.)

Configure MC to display the Full Screen mode at desktop resolution on this secondary display (monitor #2).

On video playback keep the main MC UI in the first display and set MC's display to use the Full Screen mode (on display #2) and adjust the aspect ratio with MC's and TV's controls.


Edit: edited a bit...

[Mr ChriZ]

Cheers Alex.
Although at the moment the 1280x720 is working fine and everythings in the right place now, no black bars, and the toolbars are in the right place.

I would say MC/Windows is unreadable, but then it was at lower resoloutions too....
Neither 800x600 nor 640x480 is wide, so the result would be black bars or the toolbars disappearing off the top again.

I think I may have worked out a way to get lower resoloutions which are wide but
I'm not sure yet, and someone else is currently watching TV, so i'll try it later.

[Alex B]

Usually I just set the TV to anamorphic wide screen mode if the video is 16:9 instead of 4:3. In that case the PC still sends the video in 4:3 aspect ratio (e.g. 800x600), but the TV is set to display it wider. It is the same setting that is used with a regular stand-alone DVD player when anamorphic DVD videos are played.

[Mr ChriZ]

I couldn't get a lower resoloution to work, it always needed to
pan.  So I'm sticking with the higher res.  It seems to work perfectly.
According to that forum link I posted, it actually scales it down
before sending it over S-Video.  You'd think that would harm the picture
quality or something, but we watched something on it last night
and it was really good, so I'm gonna go for if it ain't broken....

[Alex B]

I'm glad that it works.

I forgot to mention that my experience is from ATI drivers (I have three different Radeon cards).

Obviously NVidia drivers work differently with S-Video output.

If I use something like 1280x only a part of the screen is visible and I need to pan or tilt for the other parts.

ATI has a Theater mode that outputs videos directly to the S-video output, but that works only with video playback. When a video is not playing the TV shows a copy of the main display.

Instead of the Theater mode I prefer to use TV-out as a lower resolution secondary display because I can maximize MC's display window there and keep the main UI in the primary display. In that way I can use the TV for displaying full screen cover art, visualizations and slide shows.