Help with my new setup, well at least tell me its working fine

sid

sid

sid

Soldato
Joined
9 Feb 2003
Posts
5,178
Location
London
Hi,

I just took the delivery of a LG 37" LC2D screen and its connected to to Telewest by SCART and more importantly its connected to my pc via HDMI - DVI cable.

I tried playing some HD stuff and the quality is insane. I got some 720p WMV HD videos from MS and they work fine with VLC player and fill the whole screen perfectly.

Problems include

720p videos from Quicktime are borderline stuttering :( and don't fill full screen which is lame but anyways.

DVDs look fantastic but does anyone know how to get them fill screen at 1360*768. Its got large black borders on both top and bottom, isn't the whole point of a widescreen TV, is to get rid of them? I've tried VLC and windvd so far.

HTPC spec

AMD 2500+ at 1.83ghz, ( QT 720p is only stutter free at 2.2ghz when clocked)
Geforce 4 ti4400 81.95
512mb ram (doesn't seem to be getting used a lot tbh.
Win xp pro

any ideas how to make DVDs display full screen.
 
Edit 1/

Just tried Saving private ryan and that went full screen without any black borders?

any ideas how this is supposed to work?

Edit 2/ Tried Bourne Supremacy and that has black lines top and bottom taking up a big chunk of the screen. Thats ridiculous tbh.
 
Last edited:
OK Problem figured out

Most of these dvds are 2.40:1 or some lame anamorphic format.

Saving private ryan is 1.78:1 or 16:9 so that play full screen fine

Ok so I can't be the only one with the problem, how do i zoom to full screen, i can't seem to find any way to do so on the TV , is there any software that will fix these dvds for me

sid
 
The vast majority of DVDs still have black bars on a 16:9 telly. You are seeing the width of the original film as they are usually captured in 2.35:1 IIRC.

Sure someone else may have a better explanation of how it all works, but I think thats the whole jist of it.

EDIT:

See you found it while I was writing my post :)
 
I think part of the problem is that TV and film are recorded in different aspects and that Film is narrower than TV in most cases.

Consequently, TV will fill the screen and some films will leave black borders.

/Prepares to stand corrected.
 
it will be down to the aspect ratio in which they were mastered in mate. I have loads of dvds which have black bars at the top and bottom. you can make it full screen but then you lose a bit off the sides, you could also prob stretch the image but then the images would look weird. just play with the settings on your DVD software

what software are you using ?


few little tips, i am by no means an expert though.

Install the following.

PowerDVD
FFDSHOW
Nvidia Pure decoder

that should let you play pretty much every format very well.


there are 2 other problems with your system

-Memory, should upgrade to 1gig minimum ASAP,
-graphics card is a bit long in the tooth, a newer one should reap rewards
 
Geforce 4 was a decent card for HTPC use. Its not like its doing 3d or anything and would be a needless spend for this use IMO. RAM though, definately
 
Ah thanks for the replies so far,

I am wee'd off to know after blowing a grand on a tv i still have problems. I am suprised they do this tbh, Glad i haven't bought hunderds of dvds in 2.35:1 format lol

Im downloading powerdvd now, I have ffdshow installed . not sure how to use it tbh.

sid
 
there was a thread with a link on it not to long ago about how to get the best out of FFDSHOW , give the search button a whirl and try and find it, was really useful info
 
I would be careful of powerdvd to be honest, I tried the trial v7 in a new system and this was playing DVd's fine, however as soon as trial completed it fragged all the decoders so even MS Mp11 wouldnt work

edit

FFDshow and PureVideo might be worth it but you cant tell until after you have purchased them, which is a bit of a *****
 
sid said:
Ah thanks for the replies so far,

I am wee'd off to know after blowing a grand on a tv i still have problems. I am suprised they do this tbh, Glad i haven't bought hunderds of dvds in 2.35:1 format lol

Im downloading powerdvd now, I have ffdshow installed . not sure how to use it tbh.

sid
Click to expand...

lol, indeed.
 
OK well

powerdvd seems to work fine and the picture quality is very good as well,

tried a few games and they look good too.

Would reccomend this TV to anyone. top stuff.

sid
 
Definitely get the Nvidia purevideo codecs (you are supposed to buy them!) and to get the best out of playback you need a Nvidia 6600 or better otherwise some of the MPEG2 decoding is offloaded onto your processor
 
Musashi said:
Definitely get the Nvidia purevideo codecs (you are supposed to buy them!) and to get the best out of playback you need a Nvidia 6600 or better otherwise some of the MPEG2 decoding is offloaded onto your processor
Click to expand...


Well i don't have a geforce 6 series card so that would be pointless surely?
 
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