[Deadsy]

The situation is this: i made a decent set up for kodi on the living room TV, Living room TV is dominated by my brother in law and his Children. I showed them how to use kodi with a 360 Controller, they love it. The only problem is that my brother has figured out how to adjust the pixel ratio from the video settings during video playback. This causes me to constantly cringe. I give them movies in 1080p HD to watch, but he goes and adds Black Bars to everything, Claiming "You can see it better that way" V.v - To me this is folly, there is no need for any black bars on anything in my opinion, the reason we grew up watching things with black bars on them is that we had SQUARE CRT tvs as children, and Movies are / were shot in Rectangles. Now we all have HDTVs which are in the shape of RECTANGLES, and Movies are all still shot in RECTANGLES, so there is no reason to watch any movies in black bars, KODI even has a setting to Reduce Black Bars, because devs know how much we hate black bars....

So what im trying to do is lock him out of the in playback video settings so that the pixel ratio will remain the way i have it set and set to default. He is the only one in the house who wants black bars on all his movies, even the children dislike it and agree with me that we shouldn't be watching anything with black bars.is there an XML i can edit and Lock down somehow to prevent him from making any changes? the Profile Lock settings don't seem to affect it.

This is on Kodi 16.1 Jarvis BTW, i dislike Krypton for my own reasons.

Any solutions appreciated!

[Dangelus]

Actually there are various degrees of widescreen aspect ratio so seeing black bars on certain movies is quite normal.

http://www.red.com/learn/red-101/video-aspect-ratios


If you eliminate the black bars in these situations you will either be losing content from view either side (zoom in) or distorting the image (stretch). Personally not my cup of tea, I like to watch things as intended but each to his own...

[Deadsy]

right, but stretched or not, there is no loss of quality in filling up the entire screen, and to my eyes, total loss of quality by adding black bars. Also i do not lose content from view on either side, because rectangles fit inside of rectangles. A film shot in the shape of a rectanlgle should fit within my rectangle hdtv. Would you watch a sports game if black bars were suddenly added to the top and bottom of it on your 55" tv? i didnt think so. didnt come here to argue preferences tho, my question still stands.

[blossom24]

rectangles fit inside of rectangles

Yes... and No. Just because you have two rectangles, it does not mean their "Proportions" are the same. 4:3 is a rectangle and 16:9 is a rectangle, but they are not the same type of rectangle.

there is no loss of quality in filling up the entire screen

Depends how you do it. If you stretch the picture along one axis, yes you distort the picture so there is a loss of quality from the original.
If you stretch along both axis you are going to lose a section of the picture somewhere, so again there is a loss of quality. (you are not seeing the whole picture)

This is different from the normal resolution upscale. (720p upscaled to 1080p where both aspect ratios are the same)

Obviously we don't know what you are watching. But if you look at the back cover of the DVD\Bluray case, it will tell you the aspect ratio. A normal HDTV has an aspect ration of 16:9 aka 1.78:1. A typical BluRay movie is 2.35:1 They are both rectangles, sure, but to get one to fit in the other to perfectly fill the screen will either mean a distorted stretching or a loss of part of the picture. Either case is a loss of quality. That is why you get the black bars because although a rectangle fits in a rectangle, the proportion and area is not the same.

[Deadsy]

Well anytime you people wanna stop arguing with me about black bars and actually offer up a solution to my problem thatd be great.

But for reference, this is what im talking about:
My brother will take an Episode like this:
https://puu.sh/v0Gye/8142a0b0e7.jpg

and make it look like this:
https://puu.sh/v0Gxq/34c81a5b12.jpg

No iirc when i watched this Show on Original Air Dates, the entire picture filled my screen like in the first picture, and there is no distorted stretching or loss of a part of the picture, that is the HD picture as broadcasted on HDTV.
But please can we not argue about the black bars, and actually focus on the question at hand: is there a way to Lock a user out of the in playback video settings

[blossom24]

I'm out...

[jjd-uk]

All settings in the GUI should be contained in guisettings.xml in your Userdata (wiki) folder which if added to an advancedsettings.xml (wiki) will lock those settings and remove them from the GUI. I'm about to go to bed so can't offer anymore details than that at this time.

[DJ_Izumi]

To me this is folly, there is no need for any black bars on anything in my opinion, the reason we grew up watching things with black bars on them is that we had SQUARE CRT tvs as children, and Movies are / were shot in Rectangles. Now we all have HDTVs which are in the shape of RECTANGLES, and Movies are all still shot in RECTANGLES, so there is no reason to watch any movies in black bars, KODI even has a setting to Reduce Black Bars, because devs know how much we hate black bars....

I'm going to cover a few things here since you apparently missed out on 8th grade geometry.

1) A square is a kind of rectangle.

2) CRT TV's were not square. They had a ratio of width to height of 4:3. You can argue against this one ALL you want but I assure you a 'square' most certainly has the same length on all sides, there is no such thing as a square that is otherwise.

3) Rectangles can come in many different ratios from such as 4:3 which was common for television in the SDTV era. 16:9 which is the most common for televisions in the HDTV era. However for cinema, much wider ratios are the norm, all of which I am about to list would leave 'letter boxing' (Let's call it the right term instead of 'black bars' like some kind of scrub, okay?) of varying degrees when with correct aspect ratio on a 16:9 TV. 1.85:1, 2.35:1 or 2.39:1 are common. With the later two being fairly wide.

4) I find it very weird that your choice of language indicates that you believe that there is only one kind of rectangle with a fixed ratio between it's width and height. It's just super weird.

[Deadsy]

Please stop arguing about geometry and ratios. 4:3 = square 16:9 = rectangle. That is not the point of the thread. Please find an answer to my question or move along thank you.

[blossom24]

Deadsy,

NO-ONE is arguing with you!!! So please refrain from repeating that statement.

You have come here looking for help! Believe it or not, we have actually been trying to help you. What you wrote in post #1, #3 & #9 is erroneous which shows a lack of understanding. We are not sitting in front of your TV seeing what you are seeing, so I and others just wanted to make sure you were understanding the concepts, which you clearly are not (and still not according to post #9).

Had you posted those photos in the first post, we would have had a better understanding of what you were trying to get at. And yes, those photos clearly show the picture is distorted when using black bars.

But demanding answers is not the way to go.

A square... http://www.math-prof.com/Geom/Geom_Ch_20.asp

[jjd-uk]

As I said before, locate guisettings.xml in your Userdata folder. In there locate the section

Code:

<defaultvideosettings>
....
</defaultvideosettings>

Open an existing advancesettings.xml or create a new one, then either copy that that whole block into it, or if you only want to selectively lock settings then only copy that one across. For example if you only wanted to lock pixel ratio settings then it be

Code:

<advancedsettings>
    <defaultvideosettings>
        <pixelratio>1.000000</pixelratio>
    </defaultvideosettings>
</advancedsettings>

[Deadsy]

I and others just wanted to make sure you were understanding the concepts, which you clearly are not (and still not according to post #9).

I dont care. i don't like math, the "help" you were giving was only condescending and not at all helpful to the problem at hand. [/b]

'2557676' dateline='1490690376']
As I said before, locate guisettings.xml in your Userdata folder. In there locate the section

Code:

<defaultvideosettings>
....
</defaultvideosettings>

Open an existing advancesettings.xml or create a new one, then either copy that that whole block into it, or if you only want to selectively lock settings then only copy that one across. For example if you only wanted to lock pixel ratio settings then it be

Code:

<advancedsettings>
    <defaultvideosettings>
        <pixelratio>1.000000</pixelratio>
    </defaultvideosettings>
</advancedsettings>

I dont have a guisettings xml in the userdata folder. Would creating one work?

[jjd-uk]

Then you are looking in the wrong place as it's impossible to not have one, did you follow the provided link for the Userdata wiki page for the information of where the folder is located?

For example on a Windows PC

[Deadsy]

Ah. Ive got it now. Thanks so very much jjd-uk. I'll let you know how it turns out -
EDIT: okay so that doesnt work either. i can still access the pixel ratio option and change it on the fly in kodi.