Question about SD and Zooming on S3

[thebone]

I just got a 40" Samsung 4051D LCD TV. I have an S2 with lifetime, but of course it doesn't look to good via s-video to this TV. I got a Scientific Atalanta 8000HD DVR from Time Warner, and SD still looks horrible (HD isn't too hot either, but that is another issue).

I also have a Sony HS10 LCD front projector. It has a zoom mode that passes through any signal in its native size with no zooming or stretching. It puts a little "postage stamp" of a picture in the middle of my screen with bars on all sides for standard 480i/p signals. The new Samsung stretches the picture to fill the screen vertically with bars on the side. I called Samsung and asked them if the TV could do that. They said it will display whatever is sent to it as long as the cable box is set to pass-through. I have my current box hooked up with DVI to the the HDMI input on the TV. It will NOT dispaly 480i signals at all.

I guess my question is, can i do a postage stamp viewing with the zoom options on the S3?

Thanks
Mike

- it only took me 3 years of being a member to make my first post!

[ah30k]

I used to use the zoom feature on my TV when I was using my S2 but it had the unfortunate side effect of pushing many of the TiVo graphics off the screen.

The S3 has an aspect button on the remote that zooms the underlying picture without zooming the TiVo graphics. So yes, you can zoom and broadcasts that are originating in 4:3 mode.

The only caveat is that some HD channels put their own side-bars on 4:3 mode. These cannot be zoomed with the aspect button.

[thebone]

What is actually want is to NOT zoom at all on SD 4:3 material. I just want the 4:3 material to be displayed in a SMALL box in the center of the screen, with bars above and below.

Page 23 at the following link shows what i have and what I want. This is the manual from the projector and not the TV. It could just be that my TV doesn't support this. I currently get the "Normal" display, and I would like the "Normal Through" display.

[thebone]

need more posts for a link

[thebone]

4 posts...

[thebone]

5 posts

[thebone]

here is the link
http://www.iq.sony.com/srvs/DocsConnect/docget.asp?manualid=12149&DL=true

[Krellion]

You want your TV or the TiVo to make it so that the image displayed is only using 720x480 pixels (for standard definition video) instead of either of them stretching it to fill the screen, like the "one-to-one" mapping option that the projector offers.

As of right now, the Series3 is unable to do this; if you select 720p or 1080i for the output format, it will automatically stretch the video to fit. There is a chance that if enough people ask for a one-to-one option that TiVo could add it.

I wouldn't mind hearing your reasoning for not zooming the image to fit, as I have found that the S3's resizer works quite nicely in converting 480i to 720p for my TV.

[thebone]

I actually want either the TV or the Tivo it display it as 640x480, leaving 40 pixels above and below unused. This way there is no zooming/stretching/scaling done at all. With my projector, when SD signals are displayed that way, they look almost exactly the same quality as my old CRT TV. On my 101" screen, the 4:3 image in the center is right around the size of my old 36" tube TV.

If the S3 can display SD with a CableCard and HDMI better than my current SA 8000HD via DVI->HDMI, then that would be an improvement. Lets just say that my wife is VERY upset about the quality of the image as it is currently...that includes HD. there are motion blocks/artifacts on just about all movement and there are swimming pixels on static images. Maybe my cable signal just stinks, but it looks fine on my projector, and they are both 1366x768 LCD devices....strange that the one blown up to 101" looks good and the 40" doesn't. Could it be that the 4 year old projector just isn't "good enough" to display the crummy signal?

[Poochie]

Let me see if I understand you right - correct me if I'm wrong: you want the display to do "normal through" (no scaling) for 480i signals, but want it to fill the panel for 720p or 1080i HD signals?

I ask because I have an HS20 (HS10's successor), and I run my S3 in Native mode (menus are 720p, all shows are output via HDMI in their original native format) and told it my TV is 16:9, and have the HS20 fill the panel for all signals ("normal" mode IIRC). I could experiment and see if I can set the screen mode differently for different signal types (480i vs 720p vs 1080i) on the same port, or it it's the same setting for all signals.

Another idea (probably less elegant) would be to also run SVideo from the S3 to the HS10, and switch to that (and configure it to "Normal Through") when watching SD, if the above experiment doesn't yield the desired results.

For what it's worth, my experience is that I find SD video on the HS20 "acceptable" (obviously not great quality, but my expectations are low when compared to a good DVD or HD) even at full-height on my 100" diag. screen -I'm about 13' from the screen. Then again, other than hockey games, nothing I watch in SD is really in need of high video quality (South Park, Simpsons, and the like, are watched for content, not A/V "wow")

[thebone]

the video on my HS10 is fine. I was just wondering if there was a way to do that kind of thing with the S3 on my Samsung LN-S4051D. It will only display 4:3 material at the full height of 720 pixels (I want it to display a 640x480 square in the middle of the screen with bars all around). I was wondering if it was a cable box thing, which could be resolved by replacing it with a new HD TiVo, or if it was a TV thing and I am just out of luck.

[Poochie]

Ah, now I (think I) get it - you want the same effect (no scaling) when watching SD on your Samsung LCD TV. I'm not familiar with that TV or its capabilities, so take the following with a grain of salt:

If your conjecture is true ("It will only display 4:3 material at the full height of 720 pixels") then I don't think you'll get your desired results - and I don't know of anything that could be done on the S3 side to work around this (I don't know of a mode where it spits out a 720p or 1080i signal with the 4:3 image both letterboxed and pillarboxed so it's only using 640x480 pixels of the 1280x720 frame, and it sounds like your TV won't take 480i over HDMI). Anyway, could you set your SA box to output 480p (not 480i) over HDMI and see if you can get your desired results, or even a result better than "it will not display 480i signals at all"? if so, then maybe one of the S3's hybrid modes would work for you (720p hybrid = all HD goes out at 720p, all SD goes out at 480p) if you could convince the Sammy to not scale 480p somehow.