Question about MediaMVP

[jbarr]

I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this one, but I'll ask it anyway....

I have SageTV installed on a "server" PC to which is connected a MediaMVP over the LAN. I have SageMC installed, and watching SD content looks perfect. However, when I watch most widescreen movies on the MediaMVP, the left and right parts (maybe 10% or so of the image on each side) of the screen get cut off. I have tried tweaking just about every setting I could, but I always get the same results.

My assumption is that the resolution of the movies are simply too wide to display properly on the SD format of the MediaMVP. For example, one of the movies is an .avi file with at resolution of 688x303. I'm speculating that the file is not being transcoded "down" to a smaller image that fits on an SD screen.

Can anyone confirm that this is why I would not be seeing the entire frame?

My further assumption is that the best solution to correct this would be to either replace the MVP with a SageTV HD Theater box or a capable PC client.

Suggestions?

[Brent]

Go to detailed setup>Multimedia>
And check aspect ratio mode, and overscan settings

You should be able to view HD content (transcoded of course) on your MediaMVP

[jbarr]

Those settings don't appear to affect video playback, only how the UI is displayed. It doesn't matter what "Overscan Settings" I use or what "Display Aspect Ratio Settings" I use, the video is still cropped to what appears to be SD dimensions.

When I play the same video using VLC on a PC or Mac, the image, either windowed or fullscreen is complete.

The filrs are typical widescreen files either converted form ripped DVD's or downloaded.

One other point of note: These files displayed perfectly and properly when output form the SageTV PC running the client software. It is only on the MediaMVP that I am having this issue.

[Taddeusz]

What kind of TV do you have your MVP hooked to?

Are you really running 6.0.19?

[jbarr]

I have the MPV attached to a Westinghouse 42" LCD widescreen TV via RCA cables. My S-video port is taken up by my DVD player, and since the MediaMVP outputs SD only, the RCA connection is just fine.

I am running SageTV v6.5.9.204--the latest download. (My profile is also incorrect. I no longer record through SageTV. We now have a DishNetwork HD DVR for that. I use SageTV exclusively for listening to music, viewing photos, and watching video files. Yes, I need to update my profile....)

I uninstalled SageTV, downloaded the latest build, and installed it. I then enabled the SageTV Services, connected the MediaMVP, and ran through the setup from scratch.

Though the TV is widescreen, I have that input set to "standard" width so that the SD image from the MediaMVP displays 4x6 with black bars along the sides. SD recordings display normally, and widescreen recordings are letterboxed along the top. Setting this to "Full" would only stretch the image, si that has no effect.

Here are the results of playing with the Display Aspect Ratio Settings:

4x6
Video is wide and letterboxed along the top as expected, however the image is still significantly cropped left-to-right.

16x9
Video is fullscreen (no letterboxing on the top) and cropped to 4x6 SD width.

(The 5x4 setting gives results similar to 4x6 and 16x10 is similar to 16x9.)

Attached are three images from the movie The Cider House Rules to illustrate what I'm seeing:

TCHR_VLC
This is a frame capture from VLC. It shows the actual resolution of the movie as played through VLC or other media player on a MC or Mac. The frame resolution is 688x303.

TCHR_4x6
This is the VLC image above cropped to show what the MediaMVP displays when the aspect ratio is set to 4x6. (Obviously, I can't get an actual screen capture from the MediaMVP.)

TCHR_16x9
This shows what the video looks like when the aspect ratio is set to 16x9.

The resolution of of the source video is actually 688x303 or about 16x7, so maybe this is a limitation within SageTV as that ratio is not available?

[paulbeers]

It has been awhile since I had my MVP hooked to a widescreen tv, but I certainly had no problems with widescreen playback on my widescreen tv. Now, part of the problem might be your odd resolution. I always used "normal" widescreen resolutions such as 720P (1280x720) and 1080i (1920x1080) and 480i widescreen (DVD). I have never tried a video with a rsolution of 688x303. That might be confusing the transcoder. That resolution isn't even 16:9 (televison widescreen) or 2.35:1 (film widescreen)

[Taddeusz]

I think the main issue here is that the MVP is an SD device and is strictly limited to MPEG2 at 720x480. To play any other video SageTV must transcode the video. I don't know the exact settings they use to transcode the video but I always noticed that playback of videos on my MVP always had excessive overscan. I've since upgraded to and HD100 and HD200 which doesn't exhibit such a large overscan.

If I were you I would contact support to see if there is anything that can be done about the extreme amount of overscan. Otherwise, honestly, an HD200 is really the way to go. Particularly since you have an HDTV.

[jbarr]

OK, so on a hunch, I used the program "Avidemux" to simply re-encode the .avi file using a simple filter that adds black borders to the frame. I specified the height of the bars such that the resulting frame is 4x6. The end result is a perfect 4x6 video with larger letterboxes than usual, but it views perfectly (4x6, of course) on the MediaMVP.

It took about 40 minutes to re-encode, but now I have a movie that's perfectly watchable.

I think what's happening is that SageTV is transcoding based on the source image size. For example, if the transcoder uses the height of the frame and calculates a "proper" 16x9 image, it crops off exactly the area that is missing. So it is obviously a function of how SageTV is transcoding.

And of course it's all because of a non-standard resolution on the source.