Re: Yet another 4:3 vs. wide question

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When watching some analog 4:3 material hit the more info button on the remote and try some of the different zoom options. I believe that zoom option #1 should give you what you are looking for.

Jeff Griffin
Windows XP Media Center Edition MVP
www.thegreenbutton.com
www.jeffreygriffin.com



"Humbert V. Humbert" <Nobody@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:FPWdnY-L6oUNTGXenZ2dnUVZ_tOdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
My screen is a 1360x720 LCD connected via VGA. My MCE is 2005. The XP desktop is 1360x720 and the resolution doesn't change when I go full-screen in MCE.

When I watch wide-screen HDTV programming at full screen, it looks right (i.e., the image fills the screen, there are no superfluous black bars on the top and bottom or left and right, and the actors/talent have neither suddenly gained nor suddenly lost 25% of their body weight, circles are circular, etc.)

When I watch 4:3 digital TV programming at full screen, it looks right also (i.e., there are black bars on the left and right but the actors aren't over- or under-weight and circles are circular.)

When I watch a wide-format DVD in MCE, it, too, fills the screen horizontally and vertically and preserves the aspect ratio. 4:3 format DVD content is padded on the sides and the aspect ratio is preserved. All is right in the world.

On the other hand, when I watch 4:3 analog TV programming at full screen, the image is stretched horizontally to fill the screen (everyone has put on a lot of weight and circles are squished to be wider than they are tall.) Of course, what I want is black bars on the sides and the image aspect ratio preserved, like the 4:3 digital TV programming appears.

When I watch 4:3 analog TV programming in a window, even though the window is sized to be what appears to be 4:3, there are black bars above and below the image and the image is stretched out horizontally to give the same unfortunate characteristics it has at full screen.

I'm pretty sure that it is Media Center that is introducing this distortion (rather than the LCD or rather than the tuner card) because when I play the recorded TV file (the .dvrms file) in Media Player, the aspect ratio is 4:3 (or at least it looks right).

Surely there is a way to tell MCE not to expand analog TV 4:3 programming horizontally but rather to pad it on the sides like WMP does and like 4:3 DVD content does.

Thanks in advance.



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