I am just testing a newly installed knoppmyth system, R5E50. I am using VGA output to a 32" 16:9 LCD panel (very nice).

When I watch live TV, the 16:9 setting is compressed vertically (black bars top and bottom) and when I cycle through the settings with the 'W' key, it's the 4:3 setting that looks correct on the 16:9 screen.

Another question I have is about the GUI. It is 4:3 and looks OK, but stretched horizontally on the 16:9 LCD display. I was wondering if people generally use it that way, or do they normally set it to have black bars on the left and right - pillar-box style? (I also have a vague memory of reading about true 16:9 GUI for mythtv)

you have to setup your xorg.conf file to know that you are using a hd set. it's probably got you in 1024x768 and your monitor is 1360x720 (720p) or 1920x1080 (1080p). You should find a good modeline for your monitor and tell it to boot into whatever your tv's manual says (should list the vsync, hsync and resolutions supported by it in the back of the manual).

there are other things to take care of as well.... look here http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page ... VideoHowTo

Thanks for the tips. Yes 720p would be good to aim for, the LCD is natively 1366x768 or something like that.

here are the relevant parts from my xorg.conf maybe they'll be useful

I am sure that will be very helpfull. Thanks !

Since you have a widescreen TV you will want to use a widescreen theme. Personally I think that the Bltube-wide theme is amazing however it eats up a lot of RAM with the hi-res images.

The above advice on modelines is spot on. I have a 32" LCD and use a 1368x768 modeline and it looks great!

Martian

_________________
ABIT NF-M2 nView | Athlon 64 X2 3800+ | 2GB DDR2 800 | HDHomerun | GeForce 6150 (onboard) | WD 640 GB SATA HD | DVD-RW (sata) | StreamZap IR receiver with Logitech Harmony remote

Vizio 37" LCD HDTV (1080p)

That theme also causes some grief with MythArchive...

I presume there are other widescreen themes that work better then?

Anyway, the other question I had, was if I set up a modeline for 720p or some other HD resolution, does this increase the CPU load when playing back recorded TV (or live TV for that matter). I ask, because it's running on a 1GHz processor.

I haven't had any problems using MythArchive with blootude-wide. Of couse I have 1 GB of RAM and like 4GB of swap. When I only had 512 MB of RAM and only 768 MB of swap, MythArchive (and several other things) would eat all my RAM and tank the whole system. Upgrade FTW!

[There is a Blootubelite-wide theme that uses lower-res images to help with the RAM issue. It isn't included in Knoppmyth but can be found here:
http://www.juski.co.uk/ ]

===============================================

Yes ffrr, there are other widescreen themes. All of which are less RAM hungry than Blootube.

I don't think your 1 GHz processor should be an issue as long as you are using Mpeg2 capture cards. The video scaling should mostly be done by your video card. It will take more RAM though to store the larger menu images since they are prescaled to your screen resolution but once they are scaled it shouldn't be very processor intensive.

How much RAM do you have?

Martian

_________________
ABIT NF-M2 nView | Athlon 64 X2 3800+ | 2GB DDR2 800 | HDHomerun | GeForce 6150 (onboard) | WD 640 GB SATA HD | DVD-RW (sata) | StreamZap IR receiver with Logitech Harmony remote

Vizio 37" LCD HDTV (1080p)

Good point about the ram issue and the large widescreen backgrounds... i was wondering why my frontend was so slow lately!! I only have 256mb ram. I think i'll leave it there though and just use a low res theme.

As a side note, I notice that you (Martian) have that 32" MAG from Staples? If it has a manufacture date of Jan 2007, you should consider returing it before it dies on you. I had 2 myself and both died within a week. MAG has admitted that it is a software bug.

See the AVS forums about its many problems (8 or 9 pages?)
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=754996

I have 512MB, so maybe I'll stick with lower res menus, and my TV cards are all digital, so mpeg2 files, as broadcast, and stored in the recorded TV files without need for conversion.

However, it occurred to me, the playback of these files, to a higher resolution, required some processing/conversion by the CPU, and that would increase, the higher the output res. It might not be significant though, as I didn't know how much of the scaling, filtering etc is offloaded to the graphics processor on the video card (I am using an ATI radeon 9250 at the moment). Sounds like I'll be OK.

Irishcream,

Fortunately my TV is an October 2006 model and has worked like a dream for me! I read through that whole AVS forum thread and WOW, what a roller coaster. I'm SO thankful that I have one of the earlier models.

I did actually end up returning the first one I had. It started out with about 2 dead/stuck pixel which I could live with for $500 but after about a month it had grown to 8 and a couple of them were tword the center. It was still very watchable but the fact that pixels were dropping post manufacture didn't give me that "warm fuzzy" feeling. I'll called up Staples to inquire on their "pixel policy" and the manager said she had one returned unopened the day after Black Friday and since it was still sitting in the same spot 5 weeks later she would love to trade it for a "defective" one she could send back to the manufacturer.

The new TV doesn't have a single stuck / dead pixel still to this day although it does have a little bit worse ligth leakage than the first one did. Still for $500 I can't complain.

I haven't really noticed the sound issues that others complained about with the '06 version but then again I turned the sound down to 0 on day 1 and haven't touched it since.

I basically purchased this TV as a "monitor" for MythTV. The fact that it has a HD tuner, optical output, speakers, etc... it really just gravy for me.

I did have to spend some time with the THX optimizer to get it truly looking good and honestly I was never able to get the green level completely tweaked in but again for $500 I'm not complaining.

I'm am glad that I read that thread...now I know how to get into the service menu. Maybe now I can tame that green level...(or hose my TV). I might turn down the backlight a bit as well and try to improve my black level.

Really sorry that yours didn't work out.

Martian

_________________
ABIT NF-M2 nView | Athlon 64 X2 3800+ | 2GB DDR2 800 | HDHomerun | GeForce 6150 (onboard) | WD 640 GB SATA HD | DVD-RW (sata) | StreamZap IR receiver with Logitech Harmony remote

Vizio 37" LCD HDTV (1080p)

Well, I tried these settings and they work well. 16:9 fits correctly on screen during playback etc.

I ran into an unexpected problem however. Because I am running a lowly 900MHz AMD cpu, the extra resolution is too much for the Myth GUI. Particularly in the 'Watch Recordings' display, it takes at least a second to move down the list of shows by one. I press the down arrow, and wait

I guess using 800x600 isn't so bad (I think that's what it installed by default - either that or 640x480 - I just used tv on the boot up line when I installed it). I just put an aspect overide of 4:3 on the playback and it all works fine, and fast.