Torgeir Veimo wrote:

...

So (finally) a direct question: how do people with 4:3 output devices and vdr with xineliboutput configure their boxes?

(shameless plug) Did you actually try softdevice?

Dear Torgeir,

Nothing shameless about the plug! Yes, I have tried softdevice (recent CVS and recent SVN of ffmpeg). It is actually what I use for viewing streamed TV (from my main VDR) on my not-so-perfect laptop LCD. The crop to 4:3 feature works in the way I hoped (4:3 shown as is, 16:9 cropped to show central 4:3 portion).

However, as most things in life, there are some things that do not work as I would like for main TV viewing:

1. The default deinterlace options, IMHO, do not compare to the tvtime plugin available using xineliboutput (compare fast-action streams such as tennis, snooker and football)

2. I cannot watch HDTV content, which I am able to do with the xineliboutput plugin.

For sure the deinterlace is of more importance than viewing HDTV (why would I want to do that on a standard CRT in any case? Proof of concept and anticipation of a future TV upgrade is the answer).

Both xineliboutput and softdevice, as many users I am sure will testify, are good pieces of software. However, for my use, both have their pros and cons.

I usually explore as many configuration options as I can, but please if there is something I have missed that will allow me to have,

1. Excellent deinterlacing 2. Watchable HDTV/H264 3. 16:9 cropped to 4:3

then please let me know!

In the mean time I am looking at the patch Darren Salt brought to my attention for xine-lib, and the xine post plugin 'expand' (with special attention to Reinhard Nissl's center_cut/crop_out mode') to see if I can hack something for xineliboutput, re cropping 16:9 to 4:3. Noone hold their breath though.

Thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions. More welcome too.

Kind Regards,

Ian.