Sky Digital only in 4:3 on MCE

[madmaca]

Hi MCE Gurus

I have had a HTPC for about 12 months now and all was going swimmingly until I bought a new TV recently. I was lucky enough to get a Samsung 32" LCD early from Santa (woohoo!) and immediately set my MCE to a widescreen resolution 1360 x 768.

However since doing that - the feed from my Sky box is stuck in permanent 4:3 (with big ugly black borders down the left and right). This is when I view Live TV or record anything via MCE. If I switch the res back to 800x600 - the Sky feed is then fine and full screen (albeit stretched). But leaving it like that means my DivX movies then don't fill the screen either. I have a Grundig GDS3000 Skybox and the feed comes from the SVHS out and into the SVHS in on my Hauppauge PVR-150MCE capture card in my HTPC. The HTPC itself is a Shuttle ST61-G4 - so uses the Radeon 9100 gfx chipset if that helps.

Any ideas how I can get the Sky feed to fill the screen in widescreen res?

Thanks in advance

Do you have your sky box setup to use 16:9 or 4:3?

[madmaca]

The skybox is setup for 16:9 and 4:3 for second location (we have sky multiroom upstairs on a regular portable). I tried setting them both to 16:9 but that didn't affect the MCE problem....

[sanderton]

Is the 4:3 picture correctly proportioned, or anamorphically compressed? Can you fix the issue with Zoom?

[madmaca]

Originally Posted by sanderton

Is the 4:3 picture correctly proportioned, or anamorphically compressed? Can you fix the issue with Zoom?

The 4:3 picture looks a little squashed (stretched vertically). Not tried the zoom option...Is this a common problem with running MCE in widescreen res?

[daredevill]

Are you using sky+ with this setup

[madmaca]

Originally Posted by daredevill

Are you using sky+ with this setup

No - normal Sky Digital.

[evolution400]

MCE has a problem with non WS resolutions I had a hell of a time finding a proper wide screen res for my old CRT TV.
If you press info does the zoom feature appear on MCE if it doesnt then MCE has not recognised the RES as WS.
Try 1280*720 see or a custom res.

[sanderton]

Originally Posted by madmaca

The 4:3 picture looks a little squashed (stretched vertically). Not tried the zoom option...Is this a common problem with running MCE in widescreen res?

MCE doesn't know what aspect ratio the video is in if it's come from a capture card; you have to tell it by selecting the correct Zoom option (press the i button on the remote).

[madmaca]

The Zoom button fixed it

How dumb I feel - but glad it was a simple solution. As you can probably guess I never touched the zoom feature with my previous CRT TV

Thanks to all for the replies

[Everton1878]

I've had to start using the zoom feature as well
Never had to before on a 4:3 TV, I used to be able to have everything letterboxed
All my old dvr-ms files are letterboxed but since switching to a widescreen LCD TV they are all in 4:3 mode