On December 29, 2007 at 04:38, Daniel Tonks said...
First off, what does the composite output of the R15 look
like? Is it correct when plugged directly into the TV?
The R15 looks fine when plugged into the yellow-white-red NTSC input of the TV.
The recorder shows the R15 signal when the recorder is not in Play. It always displays correctly.
I checked how the R15 through recorder signal looks; both a 4:3 program and the 16:9 dropped into 4:3 show I was recording look fine going through the recorder, whether the recorder is set to 4:3 letterbox, 4:3 pan & scan, or 16:9. I conclude that those settings of the recorder only have to do with DVD playback.
Assuming everything there is fine, then the recorder will
be recording it full-frame on the disc. If it's outputting
such a recording vertically shrunk, then for some reason
the recorder thinks the content on the disc is anamorphic.
Black bars on the top and bottom is the correct behavior
for an anamorphic disc set to play back on a 4:3 TV.
But the mystery is that the image pops back and forth from one setting to another.
Technically I don't think there should be any difference
between 4:3 letterbox and 4:3 pan & scan modes, since
that reflects a DVD feature that was never implemented
(the idea being that a pan & scan version of a movie could
be automatically created in the player from a single widescreen
copy of the film).
Cool. I didn't know that and always wondered what the difference was.|
So, why does the recorder think it's anamorphic:
But it's not so convinced that it stays one way. It goes back and forth.
possibly
because the R15 is telling it so....
I will
try testing the recorder with...a VCR output,
to see if those recordings have the same issue.
Again, what's strange is that the R15 video, straight into the Line 1 In and out of the component outputs at 480i, displays correctly but the recording does not.
I also checked two commercial disks. A 4:3 disk displayed properly no matter what the setting; a 16:9 disk showed as letterboxed on 4:3 pan & scan and 4:3 letterboxed, but filled the screen with the proper proportions when the recorder was set to 16:9. In that last case, I'm guessing it was the equivalent of a zoom of the other image.