Watching 16:9 movies in 16:10 widescreen

[dsio]

I have a small issue I am slightly peeved about. I've had my new 2407WFP for a couple of weeks now, and yes its absolutely brilliant and I love it. Gaming and desktop use is amazing, and the ability to have code right across 1920 pixels instead of being moved to the next line makes python far more beautiful to look at but...

16:9 movies are a bitch. I get the tiny, half inch bars at the top and bottom of my screen, because its a 16:10 computer monitor, not a 16:9 TV.

Now, as far as I can see, this is an easy fix. I need to zoom the image in until the picture takes up the whole vertical space, and a slight bit is cut off from either end. The difficulty is I don't know how to apply this.

All my DVDs, my HDTV tuner, my Foxtel PVR, and the vast collection of movies on my hard disks (which I own) are 16:9 for the most part, and the only option I have in winamp is to stretch the image vertically, which ruins the movie for me, as I just can't stand tall heads.

I can get this to work under linux with Kaffeine by manually zooming the image, but my media PC is running Windows to allow others to use it, so I need a windows app that gives this functionality.

Any suggestions?

[aghastpumpkin]

Try iMedian.
It's much, much better than MCE 2005. Not sure if you can do this but it might let you - and is worth a try.

Edit: Dude, Winamp is ancient and ghastly. Move on!

[dsio]

Yea, I know it seams to have turned to crap since AOL picked it up. Fact is MPlayer, Kaffeine and Banshee are so far ahead of anything I've seen on windows that I just havn't looked much.

So iMedian does the pan&scan for me?

[Got EpOx]

Winamp seems to be a big CPU hog now a days, seems so bloated...i still used it though.

[dsio]

I just tried iMedian out. On a Northwood 2.4C @ 3.2Ghz, with a 7300GS card, I get a max of 5fps watching DivX movies, DVDs don't play at all, and 1080i movies don't play at all.

I think there's something really up with that.

[chrisbard]

After buying Syncmaster 205BW which is also 16:10 I had some issues while playing movies (some kind of lag) and I solve it by moving forward to the 93.17 Nvidia drivers. I think you may have a fair chance by using MV2 Player ! However now it's my turn to search help. I am using my old 19" CRT as a secondary monitor in dualview. I want to be able to play games while the TV runs on it. As soon as the game starts the image on the CRT splits in 3, the upper half splits in two of the same chanel TV and below I can see the game :\ Pls hlp, I have no ideea what is wrong !!! TX

[aghastpumpkin]

Originally Posted by dsio

I just tried iMedian out. On a Northwood 2.4C @ 3.2Ghz, with a 7300GS card, I get a max of 5fps watching DivX movies, DVDs don't play at all, and 1080i movies don't play at all.

I think there's something really up with that.

Odd. All of that works perfectly for me.

[cadaveca]

VLC media player. Works a treat. Offers software/hardware encoding/decoding, and supports just about everything you could imagine, including streaming content over the web.

[dsio]

VLC is brilliant from a technical standpoint but the GUI completely blows. What I need is a Kaffeine like gui, with a decent back end.

Kaffeine gives a brilliant amount of fingertip control, allowing you to essentially choose your movie, move forwards and back, up and down volume, change TV channels and anything else, just by hovering over the control while in full screen mode, and moving the mouse wheel. If I forget to have the mouse with me, and I'm too lazy to stand up, I can ssh into the media box, and set whatever I want from a command line. Hell, I can even start recording off DVB-T using it by sending an SMS message to my computer, in case I left the house before setting it to record days of our lives.

VLC makes me get up, exit full screen, walk over and do whatever I need to do, then go back to full screen. Reading the text on a 1920x1200 screen is impossible.

[aghastpumpkin]

Don't you have a remote?
Something like the iMon system would just make all this so much easier for you...

[fearless joe]

maybe this is a stupid thing to say, (it does happen), but if you have bars at the top you loose a bit of size, but if you have it full hight, you loose some of the picture, id rather have it letterboxed, especially if its only a bit??

ps iv never found anything that the VLC cant play

[dsio]

I have a logitech Harmony remote which uses both the tuner's IR receiver and the Audigy 2 drive's IR receiver, but I tend to use the mouse more, as it also lets me browse websites in Opera, and do other things.

See, thing is if its letterboxed, the black strips are not that bad, but on an LCD, the light leakage and the mild shimmering effect generated by those static black strips is distracting.

[raphael2040]

Try BS player.

BS player allowed me to view all of my japanese anime perfectly. What used to happen was that the subtitles used to get cut off on the bottom of the screen, and since I know minimal japanese, it was kinda hard to watch anime.

But by using zoom, I managed to sort it out perfectly.

BS Player should solve your problems. =O

[cadaveca]

Originally Posted by dsio

I have a logitech Harmony remote which uses both the tuner's IR receiver and the Audigy 2 drive's IR receiver, but I tend to use the mouse more, as it also lets me browse websites in Opera, and do other things.

See, thing is if its letterboxed, the black strips are not that bad, but on an LCD, the light leakage and the mild shimmering effect generated by those static black strips is distracting.

Um, why not just add macros to that handy controller oyu got there, and call VLC the solution? I use the "G-Keys" on the keyboard for this.

[jordancheto]

Hello,
I have the following question about Dell 2407FPW:
In 1:1 pixel mapping mode, when I get signal from my external DVD player (not PC DVD), trough the component input, witch is 576p (aspect ratio 16:9), what will I see? A small rectangular picture with height 576 pixels (aspect ratio 16:9) centered at the screen, or full screen picture with aspect ratio 16:9 (and horizontal thin black bands)?

Or how can I get 16:9 AR picture from my external DVD in full screen, without stretch to 16:10 (witch is AR of the monitor).

Please, anyone, who have this monitor to help me!
Thank You

[dsio]

I just gave it a go, and it displayed in 16:9, with black bars top and bottom, height 1080 pixels, width 1920 pixels. That's from a Sony DVD player on component.