On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 1:52 PM, Hans Verkuil <[email protected]> wrote: > Does that mean that you have to adjust your TV every time the format changes!? > > Usually when I am in the US and watch TV in my hotel room the picture is > always distorted. I really hope that is not normal behavior for NTSC and > widescreen TVs.
In the United States, NTSC is expected to be in 4x3, and if the content is widescreen then the content provider uses black bars above and below to preserve the aspect ratio. Televisions have various features to allow the user to decide whether to stretch the 4x3 video or to preserve the 4x3 aspect ratio on the widescreen display (by adding black bars to the left and right). There are also zoom features built into televisions to attempt to crop out where the black bars would be. But none of this is automatic. It's really unfortunate that WSS functionality was never adopted in the US, since it's really annoying to get a widescreen program coming over an NTSC signal in 4x3 format with black bars and not have it show up in it's natural aspect ratio even on a widescreen television. The United States has basically concluded that the only way to get true widescreen is to watch digital HD TV. Devin -- Devin J. Heitmueller - Kernel Labs http://www.kernellabs.com _______________________________________________ ivtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://ivtvdriver.org/mailman/listinfo/ivtv-users
