[digi-head]

I've searched the forum, but haven't found much information related to anamorphic widescreen displays. I realize they are probably pretty uncommon, but they do exist in the projector world. I have a 2.39:1 ratio projector screen, and I would like to be able to set my desktop resolution on my HTPC to 1920x820 and run XBMC at that ratio. I can do this now, but the skin always gets stretched out, and doesn't look right.

How much work is required to make a skin compatible with a 2.39:1 aspect ratio? Would this involve essentially a "start from scratch" approach, or can a skin be modified to another aspect ratio without starting from scratch? Are there too few people out there in my situation to warrant such a feature request of an existing skin?

In the meantime, it would benefit me to be able to run a 16:9 compatible skin in my 1920x820 resolution without stretching the skin, and be able to play 2.39:1 aspect content at fullscreen. Can anyone tell me if this is possible?

[legendman]

I'm no expert by any means, but I would suggest you pick out a skin that looks decent enough stretched, then edit it. Alaska might be good. Then, go looking through the .xml files to change objects like poster or album art. Look for something like this

Code:

<aspectratio align="center">stretch</aspectratio>

and change them to scale, like

Code:

<aspectratio align="center">scale</aspectratio>

This is what I do for my 16:10 display, at least, to keep it from being smushed. Hopefully I didn't mix that up. I'm not sure what you can do about fonts, except for maybe finding a thin font.

Edit: I went ahead and tried out my own advice to see how it would look, and the results weren't so hot. Poster views end up being square views, and I'm sure that you could find a much better font, but oh well. Here's how it came out, anyway.

[digi-head]

Hmm, I don't see what you're seeing in those screenshots. Those look pretty good to me! I'm used to using fanart, which is really noticeable when it's stretched. Everything looks proportionally correct in your screenshots to me, though. I've never used Alaska, and it looks pretty nice in those shots, so maybe I'll give it a try.

Thanks for taking the time to try it out for me. I'll try it myself tonight or tomorrow and report back.