|
|
| snoclowNIX |
 Posted: Mar 15 2005, 04:53 AM |
 |
|
Unregistered
|
I think I figured this out. I'll explain what I have first
37" LCD TV, widescreen
HDTV Receiver, for DirecTV
ATI TV Wonder Pro
WinXP
VirtualVCR
The show I'm recording isn't in HiDef. This doesn't really matter because the outputs to the comp are component-video and they don't carry HD video. I suppose there are capture cards out there that handle that, something new to research.
The TV is connected via HDMI cable, so the receiver automatically does some adjusting to the TV. I thought this would get in the way but it seems to be OK with the right settings. The TV and Receiver have some settings to handle broadcasts meant to adjust the aspect ratio to 4:3 or 16:9 TV's/broadcasts. So this had me confused but I think I got it to work with my capture card.
During all of this VirtualVCR is set to 720x480. I tried playing around with the VVCR numbers but it just returns an error if changed off of 720x480.
When you adjust this don't worry to much what it looks like on the widescreen TV, just look at the computer monitor. The HD receiver has a button labeled RESOLUTION and the 3 settings that affects are 480, 720, 1080. This is on a panel on the receiver itself. The capture card can see all 3, but the only one that doesn't have a messed up AR is the 480. Also, the other resolutions don't fill the 720x480 window on my monitor. The image ends up with blank spaces to the left and right with the image looking tall and skinny in the middle, i.e. compressed inward in the horizontal.
So that is what I set the Resolution on the receiver box, but that wasn't the last thing to mess with. The other setting that had to be adjusted is Screen Formats. This is done by a button on the remote control labeled, you guessed it, Format. The 3 settings for a 4:3 broadcast on a 16:9 screen TV are:
- Pillar Box - like letter box, but with side bars, 4:3 ratio remains intact
- Full - stretched horizontally to fill the screen, image appears stretched
- Zoom - top & bottom cropped, image fills screen
Once again, don't worry about what the TV looks like, just the capture window on the monitor. Full was the setting that worked.
Hope you didn't fall asleep during all that.  So in summary there are 2 things to adjust on the HD reciever to work with the old analog capture card.
- Resolution on the HD receiver's panel set to 480
- Screen Format set to 480/16:9 Full
The TV has it's own 4 Screen Formats, but you don't have to worry about them at the time of capture. It's the HD receiver that is connected to the capture card. Now when you playback, you can mess around with all those settings to your liking.  |
|
|
