so who wants to jump in and change the ratio thru a contribution ?

Ohh boy I can see a lot of changes coming down the pipe... 

I have sent off a support ticket Cyberlink outlining this very question.,, as my toolkit area for the player has no such feature ..

I just read this thread for the first time and *seizure* fits my reaction nicely...

Quoting lmoelleb:

Quote:
Do you have a source explaining this weird thing in more details? I have never heard about this before, and to be honest - find it extremely unlikely.

To be more accurate, the typical signal path in a DVD player is:

480i MPEG DVD Source -> MPEG Decoding Chip -> Deinterlacing Processer (if present, converts to 480p) -> Onboard Scaler (if present, converts from 480p to 1080i, 720p, 1080p, etc.) -> HDMI Chip (converts to digital signal, inserts HDCP, etc.) -> Digital HDMI out

With SDI, it's

480i MPEG DVD Source -> MPEG Decoding Chip -> SDI Chip -> Digital 480i SDI out

The external scaler then does all the deinterlacing, scaling, zooming, etc.

http://www.custom-ht.com/sdi/main.html

One of the things he shows there is that even if you can set the DVD player's HDMI output to "480i," the signal still undergoes some processing after the MPEG decoder, which is undesirable when you are using an external SDI capable scaler.

Quoting Grendell:

Quote:
Quoting lmoelleb:

Quote:
Do you have a source explaining this weird thing in more details? I have never heard about this before, and to be honest - find it extremely unlikely.

You can find it as unlikely as you want, but that does not make you correct.

To be more accurate, the typical signal path in a DVD player is:

480i Raw Source -> Decoding Chip -> Deinterlacing Processer (if present, converts to 480p) -> Onboard Scaler (if present, converts from 480p to 1080i, 720p, 1080p, etc.) -> HDMI Chip (converts to digital signal, inserts HDCP, etc.) -> HDMI out

But all of this is digital and Decoding, Deinterlacing and Scaling may all be done by the same chip.

Quote:

With SDI, it's

480i Raw Source -> Decoding Chip -> SDI Chip -> SDI out

The external scaler then does all the deinterlacing, scaling, zooming, etc.

http://www.custom-ht.com/sdi/main.html

You still are doing all of the same steps, you just have moved some of them to a different box. Yes if you spend lots of money that box may do a better job, but it may not.

SDI and HDMI are just different ways to send digital video as a bit-stream. SDI uses a single stream at 270Mbits/s for SDTV video and 1.5Gbits/s for 1080i HDTV. 1080p SDI at 3.0Gbits/s is also available but not as common. HDMI uses three serial bit-streams plus a fourth as a clock to send the video.

pdf

Quoting Grendell:

Quote:
Quoting lmoelleb:

Quote:
Do you have a source explaining this weird thing in more details? I have never heard about this before, and to be honest - find it extremely unlikely.

You can find it as unlikely as you want, but that does not make you correct.

To be more accurate, the typical signal path in a DVD player is:

480i Raw Source -> Decoding Chip -> Deinterlacing Processer (if present, converts to 480p) -> Onboard Scaler (if present, converts from 480p to 1080i, 720p, 1080p, etc.) -> HDMI Chip (converts to digital signal, inserts HDCP, etc.) -> HDMI out

With SDI, it's

480i Raw Source -> Decoding Chip -> SDI Chip -> SDI out

The external scaler then does all the deinterlacing, scaling, zooming, etc.

http://www.custom-ht.com/sdi/main.html

There is a useful description here of interlacing versus progressive display that also deals with the upscaler that I use as part of my AV Receiver and that is present in a lot of products.

Quoting Unicus69:

Quote:
Let me try this one more time for those that still don't get it.  The term 'anamorphic' has nothing to do with aspect ratio but has everything to do with how the image is displayed.  Let's look at some examples to see if it helps get that point across.

First, 1.85:1...


This is a non-anamorpic image as displayed on a 16:9 TV.  Notice how the image looks "squished"?  That is because it was designed to be viewed, in a letterbox format, on a 4:3 TV.  When viewed on a 16:9 TV, it is horizontally stretched to fit the screen.  The source is still 1.85:1, but the TV has distorted the image so that it fits into the widescreen.


This is the same image, anamorphically enhanced for widescreen TVs.  Again, the source is 1.85:1, but it has been encoded in such a way that it is displayed properly on a 16:9 TV.  When displayed on a 4:3 TV, it will automatically be letterboxed.

Now, 2.35:1...


This is a non-anamorphic image as displayed on a 16:9 TV.  As with the image above, and for the same reason, it is "squished".


This is the same image, anamorphically enhanced for widescreen TVs.  Notice the black bars at the top and bottom?  These are there because the source is 2.35:1.  The fact that it is "anamorphically enhanced for widescreen TVs" does not change the aspect ratio, it simply allows it to be displayed properly.

Click on this link Anamorphic vs. Non-Anamorphic DVD (1.85:1 Aspect Ratio Film) for another set of example pictures with captions.

It is part of the The Ultimate Guide to Anamorphic Widescreen DVD for Everyone! at www.thedigitalbits.com.

Personally I use a video processor so I can scale and zoom the picture to what I want:

It offers full control over the aspect ratio. There are 4 predefined input aspect ratio settings:

4:3 Full Frame: to watch 4:3 content while preserving the aspect ratio

4:3 Letterbox: to watch 4:3 Letterbox, non-anamorphic, content full screen with no geometric distortion on a 16:9 display.

4:3 Non-Linear Stretch (Panorama): to watch 4:3 content stretched to fill my 16:9 display. In this mode, the image is distorted such that most of the stretching occurs at the side of the image, not the center.

16:9 Full Frame: to watch 16:9 anamorphic content while preserving the aspect ratio. This mode can also be used to watch 4:3 content on a 16:9 screen, although the image will be stretched horizontally

You may also use the zoom and pan controls to customize the input aspect ratio to your tastes. This allows the user to reformat the image in any way desired, so the  video processor doesn't enforce a set of fixed aspect ratios.

If you would like to zoom in on the image to remove the small black letterbox bars found with a 1.85:1 source on a 16:9 display, then you can simply do this with the direct access ‘Zoom -/+’ controls on the remote control or via the graphical user interface, GUI.

Tired of those “black bars” on your HDTV?
It allows you to choose how you want the image to fill the screen with separate horizontal and vertical  zoom controls.

It also does a great job up-scaling my DVDs to 1080P.

Sometimes I want to use every pixel I paid for on my HDTV. (No black bars)
Other times I would rather see every pixel paid for on the DVD. (with black bars).

Once in while a DVD is 1:78 to 1 and I get use both all the pixels on the "disc and TV" with no black bars.

Have a great day,

zappman

Quoting ya_shin:

Quote:
Quoting hydr0x:

Quote:
I just read this thread for the first time and *seizure* fits my reaction nicely...

If you just got here I am surprised you made it to page 10.  I folloowed the thread incremental and that was painful enough. I don't think I would have read the whole thing in one go.

I did. At first I found the lack of understanding of aspect ratios quite amusing. By about page four I was completely depressed.