DAR confusion

[adom]

Hello,
could someone explain why after recording from TV with following settings:

device: HDPVR
TV station: broadcast SDTV
satellite decoder output set to 576i
and the material originally recorded around 1980

I have to set DAR to 1:78 (not 1:33) to see it properly.

I wouldn't ask such question if I recorded only programs broadcasted in FHD (and decoder output set to 1080i)- but lately I started recording SD material (so I switched decoder to 576i and got confused - of course I can still keep 1080i settings on my decoder and DAR will be OK but I suspect that's not the best solution for recording SD material)

[ndjamena]

The video is 16:9, the original material is 4:3 but it's shown with black bars on the edges to fit it onto the 16:9 display, then it was all overlaid with logos. ALL modern TV is broadcast that way. Digital TV is 16:9, when stations play old analogue 4:3 material they add the black bars. There's no mystery here.

[Skiller]

ALL modern TV is broadcast that way.

HD feeds yes, SD feeds not if the broadcaster cares about proper SD and sources it's SD feed from a separate SD chain rather than just downconverting the HD chain as is (pillarboxed) to SD.

I consider it bad practice to broadbast 4:3 originated programs that way instead of adaptively switching the SD feed between 16:9 and 4:3 depending on the program's original aspect ratio. The big problem with pillarboxed SD feeds is you lose 25% of valuable horizontal resolution and the video will never fit a 4:3 screen again.

I'm afraid there's noting one can do except maybe cropping the pillarbox but thise will leave you with chopped off logos...

[ndjamena]

ALL modern TV is broadcast that way.

HD feeds yes, SD feeds not if the broadcaster cares about proper SD and sources it's SD feed from a separate SD chain rather than just downconverting the HD chain as is (pillarboxed) to SD.

I consider it bad practice to broadbast 4:3 originated programs that way instead of adaptively switching the SD feed between 16:9 and 4:3 depending on the program's original aspect ratio. The big problem with pillarboxed SD feeds is you lose 25% of valuable horizontal resolution and the video will never fit a 4:3 screen again.

I'm afraid there's noting one can do except maybe cropping the pillarbox but thise will leave you with chopped off logos...

*sigh* I just spent the night/early morning hunting down any old TV shows playing on TV. Apparently Australian TV is degenerate (no surprises there). I found several 4:3 programs on channels 2, 7, 9 and 10 (including M*A*S*H, ST:TNG, Thungerbirds, Yu-Gi-Oh, Looney Tunes and others) and each and every one was encoded as pillar-boxed 16:9. I was going to record them on my PVR and transfer them to my PC to look at them properly but the presence of station logos on the bottom right of the screen made that step unnecessary. M*A*S*H was duplicated on a HD channel and ST:TNG and Thunderbirds may have originated from HD sources but Yu-Gi-Oh, Looney Tunes, Harry's Practice and pretty much everything else have no HD connections. Now that I'm interested I'll keep looking, but I'm assuming the current obsession with overlaying logos over everything makes it extremely unlikely I'll find any true 4:3 broadcasts.

[AlanHK]

Now that I'm interested I'll keep looking, but I'm assuming the current obsession with overlaying logo's over everything makes it extremely unlikely I'll find any true 4:3 broadcasts.

On the other hand, if you reencode it you can crop to 4:3 and lose the logos completely.

I remove (or at least obscure) channel logos using Avisynth filters. The alpha transparency ones can be reversed almost completely, the more obnoxious coloured ones you can erase and blend in, imperfect but much less distracting.

Anyway, it could be worse. Instead of pillarboxing, some stations crop the top and bottom to make fake widescreen because some idiots complained that 1960s TV shows weren't filling up the screen.

Here in Hong Kong there is a station that shows old shows exclusively. They pillar box them, not black though, they use a floral wallpaper and their logo.

But sometimes they have a widescreen show, then it's both pillarboxed and letterboxed. I can zoom the TV to get a fairly normal frame, though resolution is lost.