[KMO]

I'm considering finally moving from 50Hz CRT to a plasma display - currently considering a Panasonic V10. It seems that to make SDTV palatable, I'll still need to get an external scaler, and the Edge seemed to fit the bill.

But I gather it has no wide-screen-signal handling for auto aspect ratio switching at all. Not even the most basic 4:3/16:9 selection.

Is that really to much to ask in a £600-odd product? Especially one primarly intended to process SDTV, which, you know, comes in a mixture of aspect ratios.

So that totally rules it out for me. Shame, as it looked quite nice otherwise. The Panasonic plasmas appear to have fully working aspect handling, but inserting the Edge into the chain would shaft it.

Any other alternatives in that price range worth considering? Any hints that the Edge might be fixed in a firmware update?

[eiren]

It's not really an issue to be honest, since you just have to press one button on the remote once to switch.

The problem with auto switching is that the flags aren't always correct.

[jgrg]

Yes, it would be nice if it did it automatically.

But I have 16:9 and 4:3 assigned to the rocker switch on my logitech remote, and enjoy using it. The Edge smoothly animates the stretch or squeeze. (The picture used to get scrambled sometimes during the animation with earlier versions of the firmware, but this is now fixed.)

[KMO]

Originally Posted by eiren

The problem with auto switching is that the flags aren't always correct.

That's a silly argument. I've never come across a device that didn't output flags correctly myself, and if I did, I'd have a go at its manufacturer.

And if a device was outputting duff flags, its owner would get the same duff aspect auto switching when attached directly to a TV as when attached via the Edge. There's no way the Edge would be held responsible.

And I'm not saying that the Edge should only have an auto mode - it should still have manual selection, just like all TVs.

What's not acceptable is for a it to refuse to pay any attention to the signalling produced by my correctly functioning kit on the grounds that someone else somewhere may allegedly have a malfunctioning device. That hypothetical person could continue to manually select or get a better device. Don't use it as an excuse not to implement necessary functionality. DVDO are losing potential customers...

[eiren]

It's not the devices outputting duff flags, it's the source material ... i.e. on discs or broadcast material.

If you want a prime example of it at work... then watch the first 20 seconds of The Wire on BBC 2 and you'll see they have the wrong flag set for the first 20 seconds or so before it flicks over to 4:3.

Don't get me wrong, auto aspect is something we asked for at the start but to be honest it's such a minor thing now that all the beta testers and owners have pretty much forgotten about it. It's literally as simple as a click, not to mention you also have an added Panorama mode.

[VirusKiller]

Timely thread now that the Radiance has just received an auto-aspect switching firmware update (which works well with SkyHD). I was going to ask exactly the same question...

So, given the the Edge doesn't do auto-aspect selection, is anyone using SkyHD --> Edge --> Radiance who can check whether or not the Edge passes through the HDMI auto-aspect metadata?

Edit: AVI, can you help?

TIA.

[Avi]

Originally Posted by VirusKiller

Edit: AVI, can you help?

TIA.

I haven't updated the Radiance yet but will later today. Is there any particular auto aspect setting and good Sky material that would show if this is being passed ?

AVI

[VirusKiller]

Just flip between BBC1 (always widescreen) and, say, Bloomberg (always 4:3, I think). You need to enable the auto-aspect setting the Radiance HDMI menu for your Sky source. Thanks!

[Avi]

Originally Posted by VirusKiller

Just flip between BBC1 (always widescreen) and, say, Bloomberg (always 4:3, I think). You need to enable the auto-aspect setting the Radiance HDMI menu for your Sky source. Thanks!

Just compared BBC1/Bloomberg with auto aspect on and off using 576p from the Edge. I can't see any difference and what was on Bloomberg appeared to be 16:9. Discovery is showing some 4:3 material and the image appears the same with auto aspect on or off. Not sure if I'm missing something obvious but let me know if you think of any more material/settings to check

AVI

[VirusKiller]

Hmm. Unfortunately that would seem to suggest that the Edge strips the aspect metadata on output (or sets it permanently to widescreen) which doesn't surprise me as the output from a VP should be the "definitive image". Auto-aspect needed in the Edge methinks... Thanks for trying that. Can you sanity check direct into the Radiance?

[Avi]

Originally Posted by VirusKiller

Can you sanity check direct into the Radiance?

Yes it appears the Edge is stripping the data as direct the aspect changes depending on the material.

AVI

[VirusKiller]

Oh well... Many thanks for testing that.

[eiren]

I'll give 'em another nudge about incorporating it.

[VirusKiller]

The required functional spec is available on the Lumagen website The description for "Production 070209" should do it!

http://www.lumagen.com/testindex.php...diance_updates

[KMO]

Originally Posted by eiren

It's not the devices outputting duff flags, it's the source material ... i.e. on discs or broadcast material.

If you want a prime example of it at work... then watch the first 20 seconds of The Wire on BBC 2 and you'll see they have the wrong flag set for the first 20 seconds or so before it flicks over to 4:3.

I rarely see broadcaster errors, and when I have they've been temporary. And they can be overridden, of course.

And what you're seeing on The Wire is almost certainly your equipment being slow to respond. My TV switches to 4:3 for The Wire (or anything else 4:3, like the majority of ITV4 output) in about 1 second.

One issue there on response time is that a lot of kit and analogue broadcasts don't send a positive "this is 4:3" signal - they just send no signal for 4:3, which makes some kit wait a bit longer before deciding that the absence of signal means it's 4:3. In your case, I expect your switch from 4:3 back to 16:9 is faster for that reason.

Originally Posted by VirusKiller

Hmm. Unfortunately that would seem to suggest that the Edge strips the aspect metadata on output (or sets it permanently to widescreen) which doesn't surprise me as the output from a VP should be the "definitive image".

Absolutely right - the Edge should be permanently signalling "16:9" on its outputs, because that's what it's producing; it's responsible for scaling non-16:9 inputs to 16:9, which is why it needs to do the aspect sensing itself.

I sent my comments through to DVDO to let them know that I'm not buying it until it gets a firmware fix, and I got a polite response back. Worth keeping the pressure up - they'll only bother implementing it if they think it's an issue.

[eiren]

Nope nothing to do with my equipment since you can rewind the recording and set it to either aspect ratio, and it will still 'pop' out once they set the flag correctly at exactly the same point.

ITV also broadcast with the wrong flag quite often when they show 4:3 films.

[VirusKiller]

Originally Posted by eiren

ITV also broadcast with the wrong flag quite often when they show 4:3 films.

Not a problem. It's only in sheer desperation that I'll watch *anything* on ITV...

[KMO]

Originally Posted by eiren

Nope nothing to do with my equipment since you can rewind the recording and set it to either aspect ratio, and it will still 'pop' out once they set the flag correctly at exactly the same point.

Maybe it's a local problem on your transmitter? But that sounds unlikely. Works for me, anyway. Is this every episode, or just on one specific one? They could have screwed up once, and I didn't notice that time. That does happen occasionally.

Are you sure you're not just repeating the problem by replaying the recording? A replay would obviously pop out at the same point, if you were playing and there was a fixed delay in your equipment. Try pausing just after the start of the episode, and see if it switches to 4:3 after the same delay while you're paused.

There is scope for screw-up in your Freeview/whatever box, as it's converting signals on the basis of AFD codes in the digital domain, and changing its output and adding WSS codes. It's not a case of just passing flags straight through to the TV, like analogue.

Aha. Maybe that's it. Are you using Sky? They don't use AFD codes, they do all sorts of aspect ratio handling processing themselves. The BBC always sends out 16:9 these days. 4:3 programmes are sent pillarbox, with AFD codes to say that it's pillarbox. AFD-aware boxes usually knock off the black bars and stretch the picture out to full frame, and tell the TV that it's 4:3.

Sky, on the other hand, do this at their relay, or at least they used to. They re-encode the BBC's pillarbox signal to MPEG 4:3 full-frame. I guess their detection of the switch could be slow, or the Sky box could be slow to change its signals when the MPEG changes.

ITV also broadcast with the wrong flag quite often when they show 4:3 films.

Well, I guess I'm with VirusKiller - I probably wouldn't have noticed that.

Still, all a bit of a pointless argument. Trying to tell people that that they don't need a facility they've used for years because it occasionally doesn't work for someone else.

[eiren]

It's definitely in the original broadcast. Doesn't happen every time they show it.

Like I said, it's something we wanted from the start... but it's kind of been forgotten about since it's not really that much of a pain.

I've reminded them about it, so we'll see what they do about that.

[Marcus Wood]

I remember reading a comment by Josh Allen of Anchor Bay on another forum, saying that they removed the auto aspect feature from the Edge during Beta testing because the flags were sometimes wrong. That doesn't make sense to me either. Why not just let users disable it if they want??

If you're looking at spending Radiance money, I believe the VP50 Pro has auto aspect. I'm not sure why their argument with incorrect flags doesn't apply to that - perhaps they want to give people an incentive to buy the VP50 pro...

In my experience, the flags from the Sky HD box are invariably correct, the one exception being the Sky News multiscreen.

[VirusKiller]

Originally Posted by Marcus Wood

I remember reading a comment by Josh Allen of Anchor Bay on another forum, saying that they removed the auto aspect feature from the Edge during Beta testing because the flags were sometimes wrong. That doesn't make sense to me either. Why not just let users disable it if they want??

The flags are good enough, and Lumagen's solution in the Radiance allows sticky and non-sticky manual overrides.

[StooMonster]

I've been into auto aspect ratio switching on video processors for years, from PARC209 controlling early DVDO and Lumagen products through to meta-data over HDMI.

I'll tell you when flags are wrong: when you watch Sky in 4:3 mode and then put in standby after you turn it on again it stays in 4:3 even when you go to a 16:9 channel. The fix is that you have to go back to a 4:3 channel (or content) and then back again to 16:9 to fix it [or it's some variant of this behaviour, caveated because this is off-the-top-of-my-head as I haven't updated the Lumagen yet].

This not only happens with Sky HD and aspect-ratio meta-data over HDMI but also with the Scart pin-8 WSS (wide screen signalling) pin on all non-HD boxes.

It can be bloody annoying, you need to ensure that you set correct aspect-ratio before turning off at night.

StooMonster

[Marcus Wood]

Stoo, I have also noticed the occasional problem with going into standby on Sky. I had assumed it was my projector - I should have guessed it would be the SkyHD box.

However, it doesn't seem to do it consistently. I was trying to recreate the problem just now, but couldn't.

I suppose if you use a universal remote or other control system, you could put in a macro to switch to a widescreen channel before going into standby.