techtonic
10-26-07, 01:59 AM
Like many of the visitors to this forum I hate the Stretch-O-Vision distortion that many of the channels seem to be applying to 4:3 SD material when they broadcast it on 16:9 HD. Why would I want to fork out thousands of dollars upgrading my equipment to HD only to find out that everyone now looks fat!
At first I could find no way around this problem with my setup (an E* ViP622 and Sharp 52D62U) since both the receiver or the TV could stretch the image but neither could unstretch an already stretched source.
Looking at these forums I see many people have the exact same problem. I found a workaround that I thought I would share that should work fix the issue for many people.
The work around is this. As well as connecting the receiver to the TV using the HDMI, you also connect the receiver to the TV using the composite video to another input. The 622 downsamples all content to 480i on the composite output, the result of this is that all 16:9 material gets squashed horizonatlly back to 4:3.
So now, if watching OAR content I select the HDMI TV input, and if wathcing Stretch-o-vision content I switch to the composite input.
I know using composite signal sounds bad but it's really not as bad as you might think. The original source material only ever had 480i resolution so you're not really loosing much by way of detail - the broadcaster up-samples the 480i to 1080i and the receiver then downsamples it back to 480i. Plus the TV takes the 480i input, de-interlaces it and scales it back up to 1080p but now you have the choice on whether or not to apply Stretch-o-Vision yourself using the TV's own scaling features.
You could argue that the composite cable introduces noise. Agreed, but the results are still far superior to either watching the SD feed with all it's compression artefacts, or watching a distorted image. If you really must use the HDMI cable then there is another variation of this method that also works on E* receivers but takes a few more keystrokes on the remote to switch in and out. This second solution is to navigate the menu's to where you set the HDMI output format. Set this to 480P and you get the same result with a slightly improved picture.
This solution definitely works for E* HD receivers, don't know about D* - maybe someone could try it out and chime in on the results.
This solution is not perfect - it only works correctly for content that has been scaled linearly accross the screen. Content that is stretched more at the edges will end up getting squished too much in the middle.
Of course the real answer is for the broadcasters not to be such dumb asses and not distort the content in the first place. But at least this solution gives a workaround whilst we wait for them to come to there senses.
At first I could find no way around this problem with my setup (an E* ViP622 and Sharp 52D62U) since both the receiver or the TV could stretch the image but neither could unstretch an already stretched source.
Looking at these forums I see many people have the exact same problem. I found a workaround that I thought I would share that should work fix the issue for many people.
The work around is this. As well as connecting the receiver to the TV using the HDMI, you also connect the receiver to the TV using the composite video to another input. The 622 downsamples all content to 480i on the composite output, the result of this is that all 16:9 material gets squashed horizonatlly back to 4:3.
So now, if watching OAR content I select the HDMI TV input, and if wathcing Stretch-o-vision content I switch to the composite input.
I know using composite signal sounds bad but it's really not as bad as you might think. The original source material only ever had 480i resolution so you're not really loosing much by way of detail - the broadcaster up-samples the 480i to 1080i and the receiver then downsamples it back to 480i. Plus the TV takes the 480i input, de-interlaces it and scales it back up to 1080p but now you have the choice on whether or not to apply Stretch-o-Vision yourself using the TV's own scaling features.
You could argue that the composite cable introduces noise. Agreed, but the results are still far superior to either watching the SD feed with all it's compression artefacts, or watching a distorted image. If you really must use the HDMI cable then there is another variation of this method that also works on E* receivers but takes a few more keystrokes on the remote to switch in and out. This second solution is to navigate the menu's to where you set the HDMI output format. Set this to 480P and you get the same result with a slightly improved picture.
This solution definitely works for E* HD receivers, don't know about D* - maybe someone could try it out and chime in on the results.
This solution is not perfect - it only works correctly for content that has been scaled linearly accross the screen. Content that is stretched more at the edges will end up getting squished too much in the middle.
Of course the real answer is for the broadcasters not to be such dumb asses and not distort the content in the first place. But at least this solution gives a workaround whilst we wait for them to come to there senses.