Login at Kodi Home

westwon · 2004-04-17, 21:15

i use a 4:3 projector and have my screen set to normal in the xbox dashboard.

xbmc leaves me with no option to set the screen to 16:9 when having it set to normal in the dashboard. i believe this to be by design, but i think it's a poor decision. (when set to widescreen in dashboard i can select 4:3 and 16:9 in xbmc)

with such a low resolutions as pal every pixel counts. when a movie is presented in widescreen it is much better to handle it as such all the way to the screen, and rather let the projector itself squeeze it to 16:9.

so why not set it to widescreen in the dashboard? well then my games would be presented this way, and i much prefer them in fullscreen.

hope this can be changed in a new version.

Butcher · 2004-04-17, 23:55

if your tv supports widescreen you should set that in the ms dash. contrary to what you might think, most games are 4:3 regardless of ms dash settings, those that do support widescreen usually offer a widescreen switch in the game settings.

westwon · 2004-04-18, 01:15

i do realize that many games don't take into account the dashboard setting and display it at 4:3. however there are games that follow this setting, and one shouldn't be forced to play the game with black bars at the top and bottom just because one want to view video in xbmc with the highest resolution possible. there is a simple solution to this problem, and that is to let the user set the aspect ratio regardless of the dashboard setting. i can't see this as hard to implement, nor do i believe that users will have trouble understanding the expanded choises under this option.

jmarshall · 2004-04-19, 06:11

it's been a while since i originally coded this, but here's the reason:

as you are probably aware, there is no difference between pal 16:9 and pal 4:3 except for the fact that there can be a flag present in the video stream to specify that it should be 16:9 rather than 4:3. some display devices can handle this and switch to the appropriate mode, some can't.

now, the xbox has a separate flag for outputting a widescreen format. as far as i know (and i may well be wrong - this needs testing) the xbox only allows this flag to be set if the user has specified that they have a widescreen enabled tv in the ms dash. this is the reason we have this the way it is. now, if it turns out that the xbox can in fact output the widescreen flag without widescreen being enabled in the ms dash, then i agree that we should change the functionality. if not, then there's not much we can do, save for outputting the aspect ratio as if it were 16:9 but not having the widescreen flag set in the output - not a very good solution imo.

i'll test this when i have time. i don't have any right now.

westwon · 2004-04-19, 12:40

ok, i undertand that the problem is more complex than what i first thought.

i am aware that there isn't any difference between 4:3 and 16:9 resolution wise, it's only a matter of the aspect ratio.

in my opinion though having the option to output the aspect ratio of 16:9 regardless of the flag is viable. as far as i know in addition to a monitor capable of understanding the flag, the cabling between the xbox and the monitor has to support it. i might be wrong here, but i believe that you have to have atleast s-video cabling to be able to send the flag to the monitor, the standard cable, composit, does not support it. thus the flag isn't received by the monitor and the user has to manually set the aspect ratio. newer televisions have the ability to set the aspect ratio (4:3 or 16:9) regardless of this flag, and one may therefore be inclined to believe that composit carries this flag.

i would like to congratulate you on a very good program. you have been making great strides the last few months, and i can only imagine how great xmbc is going to be. keep up the wonderful work.

**MrC** · 2004-04-19, 14:44

Quote:as far as i know (and i may well be wrong - this needs testing) the xbox only allows this flag to be set if the user has specified that they have a widescreen enabled tv in the ms dash

you are correct.

jmarshall · 2004-04-20, 01:07

just another thought:

if you are wanting xbmc to always be in 16x9 mode, you could always leave it in 4:3 and redo the pixel ratio so that it is in fact using the 16:9 ratio.

you can do this by either adjusting it using the screen calibration tool, or by editting the calibration.xml file in the tdata\0face008 directory.

that way when you have 4:3 selected in xbmc, it will actually treat the output device as if it were 16:9 as you desire.