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[richms]

Not sure if its me or what, but should I expect widescreen switching to work in PAL on a component cable? I have just swapped tv over, and the one I have the xbox on now is a 4:3 tv that has the 16:9 mode.

If I play back something from NTSC land, so its in 60Hz mode, it switches fine, like heros the tv will squish it up, and southpark it is fullscreen

But if I play something like topgear, which is obviously pal, then it doesn't squish and I have to change the TV manually.

Also, since it by default runs the UI in 50Hz mode, the lack of squish means that all the albumart is distorted. I wouldnt want the UI in widescreen anyway. Is there a way to get it to be 4:3 all the time except when playing widescreen stuff, and also, is there a way to get it to switch automatically on PAL stuff.

I realize there is probarbly little interest in sorting these out since I must be the only person in the world left with a 4:3 CRT tv, but I cant stand LCD's and plasmas are too big. Obviously its not a problem for people with a wide lcd/plasma since xbmc handles pillarboxing 4:3 stuff just fine on its own.

[jmarshall]

Does your 4:3 tv actually autoswitch to 16:9?  Mine doesn't.  I suspect many others don't as well.

And yes:

Just run XBMC in 4x3 (settings->appearance->screen), make sure widescreen is enabled (settings->system->video hardware).

Then set the video player to autoswitch between 4x3 and 16x9 (settings->video->player).

Assuming your TV autoswitches based on the widescreen flag in the (component/svideo) signal, it'll be just fine.  If it doesn't, you'll have to manually switch your telly over when appropriate.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[richms]

QUOTE(jmarshall @ Dec 8 2007, 12:08 AM)

Does your 4:3 tv actually autoswitch to 16:9?  Mine doesn't.  I suspect many others don't as well.

Yeah, I am thinking the tv is just crap since it does it perfectly on ntsc but pal doesnt. I changed my dvd player over to pal and it didnt switch either, so I think it might be the TV not the xbox. This will all be solved when I renovate and will have room for a big screen so its not a major, its just this tv looks real bad on ntsc with giant scanlines, and most of the stuff I get is ntsc so thats the main thing I want to have the tv do the squish on

QUOTE(jmarshall @ Dec 8 2007, 12:08 AM)

And yes:

Just run XBMC in 4x3 (settings->appearance->screen), make sure widescreen is enabled (settings->system->video hardware).

Then set the video player to autoswitch between 4x3 and 16x9 (settings->video->player).

Assuming your TV autoswitches based on the widescreen flag in the (component/svideo) signal, it'll be just fine.  If it doesn't, you'll have to manually switch your telly over when appropriate.

Sweet, that seems to do the trick, since the only thing I get thats pal widescreen is topgear then its only 1 show a week I have to change it over for (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

edit - it would be cool if when I play something thats ntsc, the xbox would change to the ntsc skin when I stop vs switching back to pal and then back to ntsc when I hit display or stop it, but I guess thats a feature suggestion rather then a usage issue (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Im loving the new one, I've only just pulled the xbox out and updated it from one about 1.5 years old, so much has gotten better, great media center now.

edit again:

Can someone confirm that the xbox will put out the correct WSS to make 16:9 mode happen when outputting pal? If it does I will call panasonic and complain about the advertised feature not working properly on the TV (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

This post has been edited by richms: Dec 8 2007, 08:28 AM