[clintroberts]

I have the LG DVD/HDTV OTA reciever and a widescreen Inspiron 700m Widescreen and Compaq X1000 Widescreeen. Will I be able to record in widescreen with Replay TV 5504 and then transfer it to one of my laptops to watch in widescreen. I know it won't be in HD but will it replay on my Sony HS-20 projector and/or my laptops in widescreen. Assuming the original material is widescreen. I am not sure if the S-video out on the LG outputs to widescreen. I have read about DVarchive and all but want to know if I will get good quality (I know not HDTV) to the notebook in widescreen. Just want to make sure before going through the expense of buying the ReplayTV.

 

[bpratt]

I have a Mitsubishi HDTV which has an S-video 480i output in addition to the HD component output. Both are simultaneously active. I connect that S-Video connection into my 5504 and can then record the 16X9 formatted shows. It plays back on the Mitsubishi TV in 16X9 format with excellent quality all though not Hi Definition. I record everything on my ReplayTV at high quality to get the best picture quality when it is played back.


I don't know if your S-video out on the LG HDTV receiver is widescreen or not, but I would suspect that it is.


If I download the recorded show to my PC and play it there, I get a widescreen picture. I don't have a 16X9 screen on my PC so I get black bars on the top and bottom, but it is widescreen.

 

[clintroberts]

Thanks, I am assuming it will fill the screen on a widescreen laptop. (Aside from laptops not being exactly 16X9.) But everyone knows what happens when you assume. Anyone have any direct experience.

 

[Jeff D]

Not only is the recording not HDTV, it's still 4:3. The trick is that with the right receiver (and settings) you can record a 4:3 fram with a 16:9 image. This technique is known as an anamorphic image, just like what DVDs use for widescreen images.


I've never tried the laptop thing aside from recording on the replay. Extract the image, and then run a program called DVD (crap, I can't remember the app) DVDPatcher maybe? To flag the image as 16:9 aspect. Playing back with any player that supports 16:9 playback like a DVD app or winamp will give you the correct AR and playback in 16:9 with slight letterboxing because, as you mentioned, the laptop isn't really 16:9.

 

[clintroberts]

Please see this thread to continue with helping me. Anyway to get 16X9 to play on my computer without running an alternative program like DVDpatcher. It plays widescreen fine when I use my projector.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...6&pagenumber=2

 

[Jeff D]

Clint I think you are just not understanding what's going on.


The mpeg you record is marked as 4:3 and what's ahppening with your projector is anyone's guess. There's lots of stuff that can happen, it all depends on how you have that configured.


You have two options...

1) patch the mpegs for 16:9 aspect ratio (welcome to dvdpatcher and patch the entire file)

2) find a player like the one that sony packages with the viao (sorry sony only) that allows you to select the aspect ratio.


On 2, zoom player might allow this, but I don't know. What you want is a PC mpeg player that will allow you to manually select the display aspect ratio.


If you do option 1 than any DVD player app on your PC will display the image correctly.

 

[Jeff D]

Doh, just rememembered.... RTVTools has a switch to set the aspect ratio.


Clint you are using revue, right? That uses rtvtools. The trick if figuring out if there's a way to configure revue to tell rtvtools to use the widescreen comand line option.

 

[clintroberts]

Well, VLC seems to now be the player of choice. ReVue is gone. I figured out how to get it to 16X9. Under the ectended GUI settings in VLC there is a place to change it to 16X9. Alls well, aside from needing RTV to control the LG 3510 via IR when using S-video recording input. After I get it hooked to the network I guess I will manually run through all the options as dial-up makes this cumbersome.