Incorrect aspect ratio being displayed on newly ripped DVD's - new firmware issue?

[Marcust99]

I've been a PCH owner for over a year now. I've ripped approx 50 DVD's to my HP Mediasmart server to which I stream all my content from. Playback has always been great, no issues. I always rip the full DVD as uncompressed VOB files. I started to notice lately that DVD's that I've ripped recently have not been playing back as proper 16x9. What happens is that the DVD will play and appear 16x9 but will look a lot smaller. I will have black bars on the left and right sides as well as the top and bottom, like the picture is in the "middle of the screen". I also downloaded some DIVX movies off the net that are 16x9 and they too don't display properly. When I play some "older" DVD's I ripped, they display the proper aspect ratio. I am completely confused by this as aside from running the latest PCH firmware, nothing has changed with my setup nor the settings on my TV or PCH or ripping setup. It's completely bizarre.

Anyone had an issue like this before? I'm out of ideas and don't know what could be causing the incorrect ratio on playback.

thanks!

[notdavid]

(05-27-2009 06:18 PM)Marcust99 Wrote:  I've been a PCH owner for over a year now. I've ripped approx 50 DVD's to my HP Mediasmart server to which I stream all my content from. Playback has always been great, no issues. I always rip the full DVD as uncompressed VOB files. I started to notice lately that DVD's that I've ripped recently have not been playing back as proper 16x9. What happens is that the DVD will play and appear 16x9 but will look a lot smaller. I will have black bars on the left and right sides as well as the top and bottom, like the picture is in the "middle of the screen". I also downloaded some DIVX movies off the net that are 16x9 and they too don't display properly. When I play some "older" DVD's I ripped, they display the proper aspect ratio. I am completely confused by this as aside from running the latest PCH firmware, nothing has changed with my setup nor the settings on my TV or PCH or ripping setup. It's completely bizarre.

Anyone had an issue like this before? I'm out of ideas and don't know what could be causing the incorrect ratio on playback.

thanks!

Your files are probably playing as "Actual Size".
Try This while the file is playing.:
Zoom Button.
Then the "D Pad" to change selection, toggle between, Actual Size, Fit To Screen, Crop or Full Screen
Have you read the Wiki?
It's at the top of every page!

ND

[markus625]

(05-27-2009 07:26 PM)notdavid Wrote:  Your files are probably playing as "Actual Size".
Try This while the file is playing.:
Zoom Button.
Then the "D Pad" to change selection, toggle between, Actual Size, Fit To Screen, Crop or Full Screen
Have you read the Wiki?
It's at the top of every page!

ND

i get the same also. but cant change the aspect ratio with iso files just a zoom from 0% to 100% but the video ratio stays the same, think its the new firmware.

[Marcust99]

(05-27-2009 07:26 PM)notdavid Wrote:  Your files are probably playing as "Actual Size".
Try This while the file is playing.:
Zoom Button.
Then the "D Pad" to change selection, toggle between, Actual Size, Fit To Screen, Crop or Full Screen
Have you read the Wiki?
It's at the top of every page!

ND

Yes that's correct, my setting is set to "actual size" as it always has been. I've even tried "fit to screen" and "full screen" and nothing changes. Again, the older DVD's have no issue with it set to "actual size" so this should really have no impact.

[spawn]

This is caused by some DVD's not actually being full anamorphic 16:9 but only so called 4:3 letterboxed - this means they are 16:9 movies inside a smaller 4:3 frame
This smaller 4:3 frame should then get zoomed to normal 16:9 - either by the player or by the display - but currently this letterbox Zoom option is broken in the PCH DVD app. But only in the DVD app - not in single file playback which uses a different mediaplayer, so if your divx display wrong then theres something wrong with these files.

PS: you should not use actual size - but fit to screen - this will allways try to fit the vidoe to screen without distorting aspect ratio.

[Marcust99]

(05-27-2009 08:22 PM)spawn Wrote:  This is caused by some DVD's not actually being full anamorphic 16:9 but only so called 4:3 letterboxed - this means they are 16:9 movies inside a smaller 4:3 frame
This smaller 4:3 frame should then get zoomed to normal 16:9 - either by the player or by the display - but currently this letterbox Zoom option is broken in the PCH DVD app. But only in the DVD app - not in single file playback which uses a different mediaplayer, so if your divx display wrong then theres something wrong with these files.

PS: you should not use actual size - but fit to screen - this will allways try to fit the vidoe to screen without distorting aspect ratio.

Thanks for the comments Spawn. The DVD's I've ripped which have the problem are indeed true 16.9 and NOT letterbox versions so they should playback as they do on my DVD player (16.9). The Divx files I downloaded are 16.9 rips as well and playback 16.9 on my computers fine so I don't see an issue with those files either.

When you say "this letterbox Zoom option is broken in the PCH DVD app.", is this something that's happened with a recent firmware upgrade?

[chris57]

Try this:-

1. Extract the iso.
2. Use IFOEdit to open the ifo files from VIDEO_TS.
3. Continue the steps from http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=59409.
4. Create from the modified VIDEO_TS a new iso.

[BuddyBoy]

Did you tell the NMT you have a 16x9 TV? What is the aspect ratio control set to on your TV, if it has any?

[decker12]

I have this problem as well. I play ripped DVD .ISO files, so during playback I don't have any option to switch between "Actual Size" or "Fit to Screen" - when I hit the Zoom button, I just get Zoom and Pan as options. Increasing the Zoom does not get rid of the left and right black bars, it just "zooms inside those bars".

Some movies look really awful - Jesus Christ Superstar for instance plays in a tiny little window inside my TV, almost like it's been scaled down by 50%. I'll give the IFO edit trick a try.

[cheaper_popcorn]

(05-27-2009 08:39 PM)Marcust99 Wrote:  When you say "this letterbox Zoom option is broken in the PCH DVD app.", is this something that's happened with a recent firmware upgrade?

Correct.

[decker12]

Any ideas if this has been filed as a bug report and may be resolved in a new firmware revision? The reason I ask is because easily over 50% of my ripped DVDs have this problem. Most of them are "older" DVDs, pre-2003, and the above mentioned process for manually changing the IFO files will be a huge time sink.

I can confirm that "newer" ripped DVDs do not have this problem. For instance, the original release of The Right Stuff (even though the box says it's in "Widescreen") have this problem, but the new "Special Edition" The Right Stuff doesn't have the problem (ie no borders on the right and left). Apparently sometime in the past few years the studios have starting getting past releasing movies in that "letterboxed 4.3" method.

Anyway thanks for the update, I was starting to get concerned that my DVD jukebox idea for the PCH wasn't going to be viable.

On another note, the one thing I am definitely starting to miss is the dedicated progressive upscaling and other video enhancement chips in my set top DVD player. The PCH plays the DVDs great, and give me the "true" representation of the source footage.. but again my older DVDs (that probably didn't have the best transfer to begin with) can really look broadcast-TV cruddy. Not the fault of the PCH of course, but I guess I've just been spoiled by the technology present in set top DVD players over the past few years.

[cheaper_popcorn]

Quote:Any ideas if this has been filed as a bug report and may be resolved in a new firmware revision?

It is a known problem. Not sure how the bug reporting works exactly, but I am sure Syabas have been notified about this.

Also not sure if it has been fixed in the newest A110 bugfix firmware or not since I have the A100.

[rkhames]

I was wondering if anyone has had any luck on this issue. I have the same problem with a bunch of movies and the latest June '09 firmware update did nothing to help. Fit to screen and zoom features do nothing to fix the problem. I can use my TV's zoom features to fake it but it still looks bad and I have to dig out the remote, etc, etc.

Wifey is getting pretty PO'ed. Any help would be fantastic! <begs from knees>

[decker12]

As far as I can tell, this bug still exists. It's very disappointing that it wasn't resolved in the latest June firmware. Again, it really only manifests itself on "older" DVDs, usually pre-2003, that are actually "4:3 Letterboxed". Most set top DVD players will take that "4:3 Letterboxed" format and properly scale it to 16:9, but the bug in the PCH DVD player doesn't do this.

On a side note, shouldn't the raw resolution of the image data in a "4:3 Letterboxed" movie be lower than a DVD properly transcoded to a 16:9 AR? I would think that during the encoding process, "4:3 Letterboxed" movies are *including* the black bars, which is reducing the actual amount of pixels available to the movie itself.

Just thinking that this "bug" may have a slight silver lining, because it's helping you identify your movies that should ideally be re-released with a proper 16:9 AR. Back to my above Jesus Christ Superstar example, I had absolutely no moral issues renting and ripping the "re-released 16:9" version, because I refuse to spend $20 buying this new version that had no new features over my older version, except for a proper 16:9 encode.

I am pretty sure that the old "Widescreen" pre-2003 versions of Goodfellas, Blues Brothers, Animal House, Princess Bride, and T2 have similar problems. There are other goofy things that pop up with the PCH DVD Player as well.. for instance I have an Elton John concert DVD that still looks absolutely HORRID on my PCH, like YouTube quality, but looks perfectly fine on my X360.

[rkhames]

Thanks for the update. I would think letterboxed 4:3 would look worse than a proper 16:9 transcode but, I'm not sure. Most of the movies I am having a problem with are, in fact, older movies. I haven't verified but, it may be that all of the 'problem children' are pre-2003. I really don't want to have to search around for updated versions, rent them if they exist, re-rip, and test them all. That is a total PITA.

It can't be that every PCH user has this problem with video_ts rips of letterboxed 4:3 movies. If anyone has a solution to this, I'd be very grateful to hear about it. I can't believe I didn't discover this problem while researching my purchase. I put in a lot of homework time before buying and didn't hear a word about this. I would love to get past this problem. . .

(06-27-2009 03:50 AM)decker12 Wrote:  As far as I can tell, this bug still exists. It's very disappointing that it wasn't resolved in the latest June firmware. Again, it really only manifests itself on "older" DVDs, usually pre-2003, that are actually "4:3 Letterboxed". Most set top DVD players will take that "4:3 Letterboxed" format and properly scale it to 16:9, but the bug in the PCH DVD player doesn't do this.

On a side note, shouldn't the raw resolution of the image data in a "4:3 Letterboxed" movie be lower than a DVD properly transcoded to a 16:9 AR? I would think that during the encoding process, "4:3 Letterboxed" movies are *including* the black bars, which is reducing the actual amount of pixels available to the movie itself.

Just thinking that this "bug" may have a slight silver lining, because it's helping you identify your movies that should ideally be re-released with a proper 16:9 AR. Back to my above Jesus Christ Superstar example, I had absolutely no moral issues renting and ripping the "re-released 16:9" version, because I refuse to spend $20 buying this new version that had no new features over my older version, except for a proper 16:9 encode.

I am pretty sure that the old "Widescreen" pre-2003 versions of Goodfellas, Blues Brothers, Animal House, Princess Bride, and T2 have similar problems. There are other goofy things that pop up with the PCH DVD Player as well.. for instance I have an Elton John concert DVD that still looks absolutely HORRID on my PCH, like YouTube quality, but looks perfectly fine on my X360.