grahamlthompson – 1 hour ago  » 

Faust – 10 minutes ago  » 

Well that has me totally baffled now. Take a programme like All Creatures Great and Small – on the Humax I get the dreaded black bars whereas if I toggle inputs on the remote and select the Panasonic TVs tuner I have a full 47″ picture i.e. no black bars.

I sometimes get the horizontal bars with a cinemascope movie, as I do with a DVD. However, the Panny never produces a 4.3 picture with the sidebars – least not on mine it doesn’t.

It either has to be stretched horizontally or zoomed in and the pixel aspect ration preserved.

Take a 720 x 576 4:3 image.

If you retain the shape and display on a Full HD display you need to to increase horizontal pixels by 1920/720 = about 2.666 times larger. To preserve the shape the vertical pixel count would be 2.666 x 576 = 1535. 455 rows of pixels from the upscaled image will not fit on the display. In other words about 160 pixel rows of the original image won’t fit.

See Archive material AR 16:9, AFD 15

http://www.pjdaniel.org.uk/afd/

What do you have your Panasonic aspect ratio set to? Mine is set to Auto or 16.9.

I was checking 4.3 on the Panasonic before tea against the 2000T. On both I noticed that the channel Ident was clearly visible top left corner without any cut off.

I’m assuming then the Panasonic must be stretching the picture rather than zooming. Whatever it’s doing long may it continue as it’s doing a good job.

grahamlthompson – 53 minutes ago  » 

Faust – 13 hours ago  » 

grahamlthompson – 1 hour ago  » 

Faust – 10 minutes ago  » 

Well that has me totally baffled now. Take a programme like All Creatures Great and Small – on the Humax I get the dreaded black bars whereas if I toggle inputs on the remote and select the Panasonic TVs tuner I have a full 47″ picture i.e. no black bars.

I sometimes get the horizontal bars with a cinemascope movie, as I do with a DVD. However, the Panny never produces a 4.3 picture with the sidebars – least not on mine it doesn’t.

It either has to be stretched horizontally or zoomed in and the pixel aspect ration preserved.

Take a 720 x 576 4:3 image.

If you retain the shape and display on a Full HD display you need to to increase horizontal pixels by 1920/720 = about 2.666 times larger. To preserve the shape the vertical pixel count would be 2.666 x 576 = 1535. 455 rows of pixels from the upscaled image will not fit on the display. In other words about 160 pixel rows of the original image won’t fit.

See Archive material AR 16:9, AFD 15

http://www.pjdaniel.org.uk/afd/

What do you have your Panasonic aspect ratio set to? Mine is set to Auto or 16.9.

I was checking 4.3 on the Panasonic before tea against the 2000T. On both I noticed that the channel Ident was clearly visible top left corner without any cut off.

I’m assuming then the Panasonic must be stretching the picture rather than zooming. Whatever it’s doing long may it continue as it’s doing a good job.

Sorry for the delay (plumbing problems)

TV is set to 16:9 Overscan off.

TBH I rarely if ever use it’s tuners.

I have set TV and a HDR FOX T2 to record first 15 mins of All Creatures so I can have a look at what’s different.

I guess that most of the missing data is at the bottom of the picture. Chopping of the dogs would make it very obvious.

Will post what I find.

Cheers Graham. What exactly does ‘overscan’ do?

Recorded content on HDR FOX T2 and using TV recording capability.

Strangely I have the opposire results. The Panny recording displays in the correct aspect ratio with the broad (and equal) black bars either side. The HDR FOX T2 stretches the image horizontally but does not completely eliminate the black borders (the left one is thicker than the right).

The Panny lacks the trick play capability so was near impossible to get the exact same frame, however they are close enough to clearly show the horizontal distortion.

The two photographs were resized to 1920 pixels horizontally and the black bars filled in black (to eliminate the distracting reflections from the Pannys rather shiny screen).

They were combined into 1 image. The effect on Robert Hardys waistline can clearly be seen on the photo from the HDR FOX T2. Also check out the DRAMA in the channel dog.

[attachment=36148,503]

Details of the recording file (544 x 576 yuk)

General

ID : 12294 (0x3006)

Complete name : C:UserDataTVMoviesAll Creatures Great and Small_20150317_1024.ts

Format : BDAV

Format/Info : Blu-ray Video

File size : 45.2 MiB

Duration : 2mn 6s

Overall bit rate mode : Variable

Overall bit rate : 2 983 Kbps

Video

ID : 6609 (0x19D1)

Menu ID : 16208 (0x3F50)

Format : MPEG Video

Format version : Version 2

Format profile : Main@Main

Format settings, BVOP : Yes

Format settings, Matrix : Custom

Format settings, GOP : Variable

Codec ID : 2

Duration : 2mn 6s

Bit rate mode : Variable

Bit rate : 2 726 Kbps

Maximum bit rate : 15.0 Mbps

Width : 544 pixels

Height : 576 pixels

Display aspect ratio : 4:3

Active Format Description : Pillarbox 4:3 image

Frame rate : 25.000 fps

Color space : YUV

Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0

Bit depth : 8 bits

Scan type : Interlaced

Scan order : Top Field First

Compression mode : Lossy

Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.348

Stream size : 40.9 MiB (91%)

Audio

ID : 6610 (0x19D2)

Menu ID : 16208 (0x3F50)

Format : MPEG Audio

Format version : Version 1

Format profile : Layer 2

Mode : Joint stereo

Codec ID : 3

Duration : 2mn 6s

Bit rate mode : Constant

Bit rate : 128 Kbps

Channel(s) : 2 channels

Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz

Compression mode : Lossy

Delay relative to video : -971ms

Stream size : 1.94 MiB (4%)

Language : English

Text

ID : 6614 (0x19D6)

Menu ID : 16208 (0x3F50)

Format : DVB Subtitle

Codec ID : 6

Duration : 2mn 1s

Delay relative to video : 1s 301ms

Language : English

Menu

ID : 421 (0x1A5)

Menu ID : 16208 (0x3F50)

Duration : 2mn 6s

List : 6609 (0x19D1) (MPEG Video) / 6610 (0x19D2) (MPEG Audio, English) / 6611 (0x19D3) (MPEG Audio) / 6614 (0x19D6) (DVB Subtitle, English)

Language : / English / / English

Service name : Drama

Service type : digital television

UTC 2015-03-17 10:00:00 : en:All Creatures Great and Small / en:Home and Away: Tears and laughter at the 1930s country practice that caters for the real animals in the community. James upsets the greyhound owners at the local dogtrack. / user defined / / 01:00:00 / Running

UTC 2015-03-23 09:00:00 : en:Born and Bred / en:The Best Man: EastEnders and Holby City star Michael French teams up with Likely Lad James Bolam in the drama series about father-and-son doctors set in a 1950s Lancashire village. / user defined / / 01:00:00 /

UTC 2015-03-23 10:00:00 : en:All Creatures Great and Small / en:Big Steps and Little Uns: A voyage back through time to a more innocent age to meet the Yorkshire vets. Siegfried, James and Tristan deal with domestic disharmony in their own ways. / user defined / / 01:00:00 /

UTC 2015-03-23 11:00:00 : en:The Bill / en:Boomerang Copper: Part Two: The sound of the sirens signals another visit to Sun Hill. Luke is horrified when an old face returns – who could it be? And Sheelagh is kidnapped. / user defined / / 01:00:00 /

My Toshiba tv has 10 different settings for aspect, a so called ‘super live 2’ setting will zoom and fill a 4:3 picture onto a 16:9 screen. On a previous Thomson 16:9 crt I had the option to zoom and also physically move the picture up or down which was useful at times on some subtitled cinemascope films. Amorphic, in theory, is best used with projectors that have very expensive amorphic lenses, although it is an extra tool in the aspect toolbox.

I personally prefer to keep everything original, I’ve seen other tv’s set to auto where the resolution and aspect are continually jumping around particulary around adverts or presumably a mix of 4:3/16:9 content which I find very disconcerting to watch, although I understand the frustration of 4:3 black bars especially if broadcasters are padding a 4:3 image to make it effectively a fixed 16:9. The SD/HD differences over hdmi information was interesting. I don’t think an ‘auto’ can be made to work 100% reliably, there’s always going to be a compromise.

damian – 45 minutes ago  » 

My Toshiba tv has 10 different settings for aspect, a so called ‘super live 2’ setting will zoom and fill a 4:3 picture onto a 16:9 screen. On a previous Thomson 16:9 crt I had the option to zoom and also physically move the picture up or down which was useful at times on some subtitled cinemascope films. Amorphic, in theory, is best used with projectors that have very expensive amorphic lenses, although it is an extra tool in the aspect toolbox.

I personally prefer to keep everything original, I’ve seen other tv’s set to auto where the resolution and aspect are continually jumping around particulary around adverts or presumably a mix of 4:3/16:9 content which I find very disconcerting to watch, although I understand the frustration of 4:3 black bars especially if broadcasters are padding a 4:3 image to make it effectively a fixed 16:9. The SD/HD differences over hdmi information was interesting. I don’t think an ‘auto’ can be made to work 100% reliably, there’s always going to be a compromise.

The YouView boxes also indulge in the “4:3 locked into 16:9” trick – for all OTA channels. Which is very frustrating for those users who like old programmes but hate black bars.

Faust – 6 minutes ago  » 

grahamlthompson – 34 minutes ago  » 

Faust – 44 minutes ago  » 

-gonzo- – 1 hour ago  » 

‘Overscan’ is the portion of picture that’s outside of the visible screen on the standard TV setup so is lost (could be anything from a few mm to an inch or more), there are other settings to allow you to lose even more of the available picture also. Most HD TVs also have a ‘Screen Fit’ (maybe called something else on different brands) option so that all available pixels of whatever your watching are within the visible screen.

Ah! now it’s coming back to me. I think mine is turned on as when I had it off I sometimes had a ‘ragged’ edge to the picture which I found annoying.

Your attachments – well blow me! that’s the opposite of what my Panasonic does. I get a perfectly filled picture, though as you rightly comment probably stretched.

It would be interesting to see if you got the same results by watching the ‘live’ broadcast (17:00) through the Panasonic’s own tuner rather than a recording.

Same live, I pressed recording while watching the channel.Only way to photograph a similar frame.

Update to my update – I have just been watching ‘The Bill’ on Drama (experiment only) on the Panasonic TV. As usual full screen albeit definitely stretched. I then went back into the Panasonic’s aspect ratio settings and noticed that it is actually set to 16.9 not Auto as I previously thought.

As soon as I selected Auto the picture reverted to 4.3 with the vertical black bars either side. So that is the mystery solved then Graham, mine is set to 16.9 whereas I assume your’s will be on Auto.

With overscan set to off there is definitely a visible edge to the picture on my TV?

Sadly, the only way to overcome the black bars issue with the 2000T is to manually go into preferences and select 4.3 and Auto in order to get a full screen image with old material. However, the Humax doesn’t appear to handle the material quite as well as the Panasonic as even then the material seems over-stretched.

Once you have viewed the programme you then have to change the settings back for 16.9 as if you don’t then those pictures are wrongly displayed. An altogether unsatisfactory arrangement.

If I add these issues to the issues of not playing nicely with my other Panasonic PVR over DLNA then I do wish I had made an alternative purchasing decision.

There’s no Auto option.

16:9 overscan off/on

H-Size H-Size 1/H-Size-2 Says switches over horizontal scanning size. Mine is set to 1. 2 may stretch to full width. I will check next time some 4:3 available

Zoom adjustments (greyed out) Says Adjusts the vertical position and size when the aspect is set to just and zoom modes

-just V-Size max is 3

-Zoom V-Size max is 15

So far can’t find a aspect control at all.

Selecting a new channel brings up a on screen message

Auto

16:9 or 4:3.

Struggling to find a 4:3 picture to play with

EDIT

Changing H size had no effect on playback of original 4:3 recording.

Graham, on the Panasonic remote if you select the aspect button is the first in the list not Auto? On mine it is Auto then 16.9, 14.9, Just, 4.3 and Zoom.

I have seen that H size 1 and 2 in menu but it doesn’t appear to do much that I can see. I have mine set to 1 also.