[Ste-lar7]

Most of us have gone through pains to record from SA boxes in Anamorphic mode on our recorders (eliminating letterboxing). In fact, I bought a recorder with component inputs for this alone (everyone here knows it is not HD resolution, but anamorphic widescreen 480i, right). Today, I was reading on the SA tips and tricks thread in the HD recorders forum and found this:

Anamorphic DVDs.

First some background. Basically, Anamorphic DVDs are SD DVDs that have the wide screen image "Squeezed" rather than recorded in a letterbox format (where the upper and lower black bars are wasted). This results in a DVD with more resolution. While some DVD recorders and formats support the inclusion of a anamorphic (16:9) flag, you do not really need that flag if you can view DVDs in a "stretch" mode. If your DVD recorder does have the ability to set this flag, then the "stretch" will automatically occur in the DVD player.


To make this work you need to get the SA8300HD to "squeeze" the images. Believe it or not, the 8300HD will do this on the Composite and S-Video outputs when it is in SD mode. Once in SD mode, the Zoom button (usually the # button) on the supplied remote will go to the "Stretch 480i" mode. This results in the 16:9 image being squeezed into the 4:3 space so you can record it. It is recommended that you use the S-Video connection on the 8300 for these recordings. Note: when the 8300HD is in SD mode, the Component outputs will be magenta in color - so you need to be watching what you are doing through the DVD recorder output.


OK, here are the step-by-step instructions:

With TV tuned to 8300 input, turn 8300 off.

Press both Guide and Info buttons on the front panel of the 8300.

Setup Wizard will come up - Simply press the "A" button to go into SD mode.

Do a Hard Reboot by unplugging the power cord on the back of the 8300, wait 30 seconds and then, while holding the front panel Power button in, plug the power back in. Release Power when the 8300 front panel indicator says "boot". Wait until the time reappears in the window (about 5 min) before turning 8300 power back on. At that point, you are good to go.

Select program to be recorded and make sure DVD recorder is ready to record.

Start DVD recorder, play program on 8300, and press the "#" key on the 8300 once to get into Stretch (actually Squeeze) mode.

When done and ready to return the 8300 to regular HD operation, go through the Setup Wizard again. This time press the "B" button to set up the HD mode with the resolutions you want enabled (it usually retains the previous settings) and then go through the Hard Reboot process again.

Note: The Hard Reboot steps were needed with 1.88.17.100 because the 8300 would randomly drop out of SD mode, go back to the normal letterboxed mode, and then come on in SD mode when turned on the next day. The hard reboot with the desired mode (SD or HD) seems to force the 8300 to remember the correct mode. This may not apply to newer software versions.


Can anyone verify? Sounds great for those with only SD inputs (most DVD recorders).

 

[nextoo]

I couldn't get past step one. Pressing the guide and info buttons did nothing. Perhaps this is for an 8300HD running SARA. Mine runs Passport.

 

[Ste-lar7]



Quote:
Originally Posted by nextoo /forum/post/0


I couldn't get past step one. Pressing the guide and info buttons did nothing. Perhaps this is for an 8300HD running SARA. Mine runs Passport.

This is for SARA only. Sorry I failed to differentiate.

 

[westgate]

disregard header.


i had the 8300 18 mos or so ago. i never had to do the reboot tho. when recording a movie from it after about an hour or so, a glitch started up (a sideways twitchiness ?). i then returned the box for the 8000hd of which i now have two. they work roughly the same as the 8300 did 18 mos ago. i hope the 8300 is better by now.

images thru the s video circuitry on 8000hd arent as sharp as they could be. not bad but they could be a little sharper for use with a pj.


as for dvd backups, images from toshiba 5970 s-vid are really clean/sharp., not so w/ my pan s77 but the hdmi is better. ive still gotten a lot of enjoyment tho from recording flics out of the 8000hd stb.

 

[hourglass]

Re: Anamorphic video from SA8300HD (SARA)


I tried the steps and it worked for me. The recorded disk didn't get the wide screen flag set though. So I have to manually stretch it when playing back. (This could be the fault of my Pioneer DVR-310 DVD Recorder.) I had to reboot the SA8300 when coming out of SD back to HD AND give it all the resolutions. I'm on SARA 1.88.22.


I've also been able to create anamorphic video via the "monitor out" S-Video connector on my Mits HDTV (WS65869). BUT the "monitor out" only works when the HD input source is firewire or internal tuner NOT component. (I don't know about HDMI since my old Mits is pre HDMI.) --hourglass

 

[Church AV Guy]

This is good news, as until now we have had to tell people that the SA8300s would only output letterboxed widescreen content through the composite or S-Video outputs. We live and learn. These things are not as inflexible as we all thought.

 

[Skyeclad]

Does anyone know if this still works. I've been trying to improve the output of HD recordings on my RTV and until now I have only read that this can be done with component inputs(which the RTV does not have). I thought I was out of luck when it came to svideo.


I am going to try this when I get home and hopefully this will work.

 

[westgate]

the stb may have to be set to 'sd' mode as opposed to 'hd' mode. or was this covered? if so, never mind.

 

[Skyeclad]

I went ahead and set the STB on SD and then attempted to output anamorphic using the # button. The setting that I expected to see was Stretch but Stretch only showed up on non-HD programming, weird.


Anyhow, when I pressed the # button I noticed now that the 4:3 widescreen show had no letterboxing and it looked stretched to me. So I set my Samsung HLS6197 to 16:9 which widened the view and returned it to the correct aspect ratio. I noted a little clipping of top and bottom compared to the original image but using the Zoom1 setting only made it worse with clipping on the sides as well.


Anyhow, I did some A/B comparisons between SD programming and the HD equivalent for HBO. I found it a little odd that both versions fit onto the 16:9 screen with these settings, I thought HBO standard was 4:3 and HBO HD was 16:9. Anyhow, I was a bit hard pressed to notice any real difference between the two. Then I did the same thing with House and here I could see a practical difference and was a little surprised at how good this HD show looked through ReplayTV. Defintely not HD quality but much closer to what I expect from DVD's. I showed my wife and told her that she was viewing from the Replay and even she was surprised.