[mythtv] DVB aspect ratio

[Edward Wildgoose]

> Many of the channels (especially BBC1 & BBC2) tend to broadcast in widescreen
> (16:9, 704x576) which I'm viewing in Myth on a standard 4:3 TV. By default,
> Myth displays the picture in a vertical 'letter box' format with black borders
> top and bottom. This is ok, but a lot of the video broadcast within the
> widescreen format is actually 4:3 (news clips, sporting events, basically most
> footage not originated by the broadcaster) which means that the broadcaster
> horizontally letter boxes the picture with black borders to the left and right.
> So, I'm often left watching a tiny 4:3 rectangle in the middle of the screen
> with large amounts of black space on all sides - not great.
> 
> So, is it possible for Myth to have an option to scale the central 4:3
> rectangle of a widescreen signal to full screen? I believe this is what a lot
> of set top boxes actually do. 

The option is there and works only automatically at the moment.  

The problem appears to be that the BBC has some wierd way of indicating when it is broadcasting 4:3 format which nothing yet understands.  There are some specs for the format floating around though (I don't have a reference on me).

I guess that more generally a "Letterbox", "Pan and Scan" type toggle would be really nice for us 4:3 users generally.  I could see that this would be useful for DVD viewing, etc as well.

Ed W