General Forum

Re: MX4200 pictureformat

Alex — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 03:56:48 GMT

It was done primarily to integrate with widescreen TVs in a BeoLink system I think. When the Avant was in the range and producing widescreen images across a BeoLink system, the images appeared to be stretched vertically on 4:3 screens.

It allows the MX4200 to accommodate for 'widescreen-only' video signals....

Re: MX4200 pictureformat

Alex — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 03:56:32 GMT

It allows the MX4200 to accommodate for 'widescreen-only' video signals....

Re: MX4200 pictureformat

Alex — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 03:56:25 GMT

It allows the MX4200 to accommodate for 'widescreen-only' video signals....

Re: MX4200 pictureformat

tournedos — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 03:03:39 GMT

Squeezing a (full) 16:9 picture on a 4:3 screen is called letterboxing. You only do it once, either at the source, or at the display device.

You are probably watching an analogue broadcast, and there the letterboxing is usually done at the TV company if needed, resulting in a 4:3 transmission format with black bars at top & bottom. Therefore you need to keep the TV at the 4:3 setting.

For a real 16:9 source, you'll need an STB, DVD player or some such - they will signal the TV through the SCART connector and tell it what the current picture format is, and the TV should switch automatically. So in practice, you should never need to manually set the format on the TV; only when there is something wrong in the setup, and the automatic signaling doesn't work.

There are aspect ratio signalling systems for analogue transmissions as well, but there are still a lot of old TVs in use that don't know anything about them. That's why the networks usually choose to always transmit in 4:3 and do the letterboxing at the source, if needed. Unfortunately this also means that some of the available vertical resolution is lost for widescreen material.

MX4200 pictureformat

jc — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 02:40:35 GMT

Bought a new MX 4200, which can handle both 4:3and 16:9 pictureformats. I don't understand how this should work; most broadcasts are in 16:9 these days, leaving the upper and lower part of the screen black, but setting the format to 16:9 further increases the black portion of he screen, ending up with a smaller screensize than with the pictureformat set to 4:3.

Anyone who can shine a light here?