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Archonosx
04-06-2006, 04:27 PM
I like to record the letterbox versions of movies even though I have yet to buy a widescreen TV. But soon.

Anyway, I have found a website that keeps a schedule of moives that are coming up in the next month and will be shown in Letterbox format.

http://www.tv-now.com/stars/lbox.htm

I record them with my Pioneer 810 and xfer them to DVD for viewing again later. These make good archive copies of your "B" choice movies that you don't want to pay for on DVD. The quality isn't as good but they are still in letterbox and if you record them from a movie channel you can get them without commercials too.

Just thougt I would pass on the site since you can't create a wishlist search for Lbox only movies. That would be nice in the next upgrade.

Archon
Moebius
04-06-2006, 05:56 PM
One thing you should note. I'm not 100% positive, but I don't think those recordings would be anamporphic, meaning that a dvd player set to widescreen would not handle them the same as it does a 16x9 DVD.

I'll have to test something like this and see what I end up with.
Dan203
04-06-2006, 06:49 PM
They are NOT anamorphic. They're basically a 4:3 image with the smaller 16:9 image centered. Animorphic DVDs record a 16:9 image squished to fit in the entire 4:3 box, then let the DVD player or wide screen TV figure out how to adjust it display it at the proper acpect ratio.

Dan
Stu_Bee
04-06-2006, 08:30 PM
Yeah...so my Tivo records from the Comcast HD-box via Svideo cable.

It shows on my 16:9 tv as Stretched-Horizontally & Letterboxed.
I hit the 'Zoom' feature on my TV to make it remove the letter box and it becomes the proper 16:9 aspect.

Works pretty good for me....

But is there some device that can be placed between the CableBox HDMI output and the Tivo Svideo input, that would keep the anamorphic properties of the 16:9 outputted from the cablebox?

Hope that makes sense.
Willin
04-07-2006, 02:03 AM
Anyway, I have found a website that keeps a schedule of moives that are coming up in the next month and will be shown in Letterbox format.

http://www.tv-now.com/stars/lbox.htmGreat find. It would be cool if there was a tivo showcase for that site.
Dan203
04-07-2006, 02:25 AM
But is there some device that can be placed between the CableBox HDMI output and the Tivo Svideo input, that would keep the anamorphic properties of the 16:9 outputted from the cablebox?

If you lie to your cable box and tell it that it's connected to a 16:9 display it should output anamorphic content as a squished 4:3 image. When you play it back via the TiVo simply stretch the picture to fill the screen and it should look correct.

Dan
mallpig
04-07-2006, 06:28 AM
If you lie to your cable box and tell it that it's connected to a 16:9 display it should output anamorphic content as a squished 4:3 image. When you play it back via the TiVo simply stretch the picture to fill the screen and it should look correct.

Dan

That's true, but make sure the cable box doesn't have the auto 4:3 mode on. If you do, it'll try to output any 4:3 content with pillarboxes.....that'll look really wierd on the tivo.
Globular
04-07-2006, 10:13 AM
Has anyone figured out how to make a Wish List with only letterbox movies? I tried with just keyword, but it didn't seem to work. Most letterbox movies I've seen have "(Letterbox)" at the end of the description.
Stu_Bee
04-07-2006, 01:05 PM
If you lie to your cable box and tell it that it's connected to a 16:9 display it should output anamorphic content as a squished 4:3 image. When you play it back via the TiVo simply stretch the picture to fill the screen and it should look correct.
Dan

Guess this is how I already have it set. I hit zoom on my tv and it stretches to be proper 16:9. I couldn't find a 16:9 setting on the Motorola DCT6200, so it's probably auto.

I was wondering if there was a device that would take the HDMI outputted from the DCT and downconvert it to proper/non-squished anamorphic. Since I'm currently stretching a squished image, I'm assuming there is some loss of resolution during this process. If it wasn't squished, but directly fed to the Tivo as proper 16:9, then maybe the pq would be even better.
Puppy76
04-07-2006, 01:13 PM
Tivos have a widescreen mode now-so if you outputed content at 16:9 and had the Tivo set to widescreen, wouldn't that playback correctly on a widescreen TV?
Dan203
04-07-2006, 01:18 PM
No. The widescreen mode in the TiVo menus is ONLY for downloaded content. Everything TiVo records is 4:3.

Dan
rainwater
04-07-2006, 01:36 PM
No. The widescreen mode in the TiVo menus is ONLY for downloaded content. Everything TiVo records is 4:3.

Dan

What if you transferred it to your PC and converted it to MPEG-2 and transferred it back?
Dan203
04-07-2006, 01:42 PM
Nope. The video will have already been scaled down to 4:3 letterbox. The ONLY way to do this is if you have a cable box and can set it to output the 16:9 image as a full screen, squished, 4:3 picture. Then you could just stretch your 16:9 TV so the picture filled the screen.

Now once we get into the Series 3 units, those will record the MPEG stream natively from digital channels. So they should have some built in anamorphic abilities.

Dan
HDTiVo
04-07-2006, 03:42 PM
Has anyone figured out how to make a Wish List with only letterbox movies? I tried with just keyword, but it didn't seem to work. Most letterbox movies I've seen have "(Letterbox)" at the end of the description.
I know, I tried this too. I ended up with the impression that the words in parenthesis were not searchable by the Wishlists.
HDTiVo
04-07-2006, 03:48 PM
Does anyone with a 16:9 TV get the TV to automatically detect the 16:9 anamorphic aspect ratio coming from the S-Video out of a TiVo?

The new HDTV I just got does not auto-detect when I play an anamorphic mpeg from TiVo S-out; I have to manually switch the TV to "Full" mode. My other HDTV, which I know auto-detects 16:9 from a component DVD out, is not available to test with my TiVoes.
Dan203
04-07-2006, 04:45 PM
My TV doesn't auto detect either. (50" DLP RP) I know there are some high end plasmas that can do this, but even then I think they can only do it if it's an HD signal.

Dan
Shawn95GT
04-07-2006, 05:05 PM
Does anyone with a 16:9 TV get the TV to automatically detect the 16:9 anamorphic aspect ratio coming from the S-Video out of a TiVo?

The new HDTV I just got does not auto-detect when I play an anamorphic mpeg from TiVo S-out; I have to manually switch the TV to "Full" mode. My other HDTV, which I know auto-detects 16:9 from a component DVD out, is not available to test with my TiVoes.
They problem is that it isn't 16x9. It is 4:3 anamorphic. Likely your auto detecting set won't detect it from the Tivo either.

I have my TV set to 4:3 stretch and 4:3 anamorphic looks good (for SD) on my 16x9 TV.

Most of what I watch is recorded 4:3 anamorphic from an ATSC tuner so I just live with the distorted picture from my SD video sources (cable / 4DTV).