SageTV & Pioneer PRO-800HD Plasma (aka PRO-910HD, PDP-4330HD, PDP-4340HD)

[cleverett]

I am attempting to connect an HTPC that I've built (see specs below) running SageTV to a Pioneer PRO-800HD plasma monitor for a friend of mine. It initially seemed pretty straightforward, since the monitor has analog RGB inputs. I've run into a few issues though, and I'm hoping that someone can help me.

The big problem I'm having is that the monitor disables some of its display modes when it decides the input is from a PC. Specifically, my friend likes to use the WIDE mode (non-linear horizontal expansion) to watch 4:3 TV and the ZOOM mode to watch "widescreen" SDTV. In almost every possible output resolution, the monitor determines that the RGB input is coming from a PC and disables the WIDE and ZOOM modes. The only choices at that point are 4:3 with gray windowbox bars, FILL which linearly stretches to fill the display or DOT-BY-DOT which fills the display at 1024x768 (this monitor uses wide pixels, not square, so 1024x768 is the actual pixel count in 16:9).

The one exception to this is 640x480, 31.5KHz/60Hz. In this mode I can force the monitor into VIDEO mode and can thus utilize the WIDE and ZOOM modes. Unfortunately, the display is stretched vertically in this mode so that the taskbar and an equivalent portion of the top of the desktop are missing. I've tried custom timings with PowerStrip, but just when the desktop is starting to get close to the right size the monitor decides that this must be a PC mode and disables the desired video modes again.

Does anybody know how to get a 640x480 31.5KHz/60Hz RGB input to fit on this monitor in VIDEO mode? Or is there any way to get SageTV (with DScaler or something similar) to do a non-linear horizontal expansion on 4:3 video?

Also, 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 DVDs look fantastic on this monitor if I play them in 1024x768 and set them to ignore aspect ratio (wide pixels again) in full-screen mode (or in 1280x1024, which the monitor scales down to fit). Does anybody know of DVD software that will automatically play a DVD in a different resolution than the desktop? I tried DirectDVD v5.2 which claims to do this, but once it opens the screen in the new resolution no video is displayed (just a black screen). If I can get the SageTV output running in 640x480 properly, I'd really like to output DVDs in higher DOT-BY-DOT resolutions so the monitor doesn't scale them.

And on a similar note, is there any way to output SageTV in a different resolution than the desktop is set to? I'd rather keep the desktop at 1024x768 and have SageTV output at 640x480. Maybe in version 2?

- chris

HTPC specs:
Windows XP
Yuan MPG600 MPEG2 Encoder + Tuner
BioStar M7NCG-400 motherboard
Athlon XP 1800+ w/ Slim Volcano 8 cooler
512MB DDR RAM
Seagate
Hi-Val 4x DVD+/-RW
USB-UIRT
LanReady WP2000 802.11b PCI
Ahanix D.Vine 7 Case/PS