[jarod71]

what is a good value to put for this? i went with 127 but wondered what others think?

[jarod71]

atom: if you don't know how the code runs, please don't comment on what it does. mplayer doesn't generate any black bars at all - they either come from the video itself (very infrequently, and mostly in the case of horrid vcd/svcd material) or are simply a result of xbmc not rendering on to that part of the screen.

changing the background colour is a oneliner. making the image shift a little is a small amount of additional effort. see pixelshaderrenderer.cpp for the source - most people will be able to figure out what to change if they look at the code.

does the image shift at all? or is there a way in advancedsettings to enable this?

[LaTropa64]

jm, the feature could be improved alittle I think. I found that some movies does not fill the whole screen at 16:9 and small borders of like less than 10 lines appear, some on the left some times.
Could it be possible to calculate how much "grey" will be shown above, below, left and right of video, and in case it's less than X (optional) it won't be shown. I know this is a compromise but those tiny grey borders just looks annoying. When they are big they look ok and doesn't take away from the movie.
Maybe I can take a screenshot if you don't understand what I mean.

This is probably asking alot but I think alot of plasma users will find this usable

I always just zoom in on those. It usually happens with a 1.85:1 movie. There are just slivers of bars at the top and bottom since a widescreen TV is 1.76:1. Making it fill the full screen is only like a 1.05x zoom so it only crops a tiny bit off the sides.

[quidividi]

Hey Guys,

I picked up a a new plasma TV over Christmas and I've been able to borrow a AppleTV recently. Of course, I'm now in love with XBMC/Boxee. But I'm crazy paranoid about screen burn-in when I watch content that's not exactly 16:9.

I was thinking about the problem and I'm not sure just changing the colour from black bars to grey or something else would be enough - as you'd probably still be left with a line along the edge of changing content to the static colour on the edges.

Obviously you don't want to have too much going on around the edges which would be distracting. So rotating boxes, etc, are out.

So, I was thinking about Philips Ambilight system which tries to enhance a viewing experience by stretching the colour of a scene beyond the screen and into the bezel.

What are the chances we could have the same thing accomplished in software to extend a video's colour across the traditional black bars?

I'm not going to get into the specifics of how to accomplish that (do we have the colour fade as it reach the edges? do we choose just the dominate colour on screen? etc..) but I think it can accomplish the goal of giving the unused portions of the screen equal wear and possibly make watching a little more immersive.

Unfortunately, not being a coder I can't begin to comprehend how easy/hard this might be, but I hope someone with the appropriate skills, if not take on the challenge, give some technical insight.

Thanks for your time guys,
Wayne

[TheJaff2]

Hey Guys,

I picked up a a new plasma TV over Christmas and I've been able to borrow a AppleTV recently. Of course, I'm now in love with XBMC/Boxee. But I'm crazy paranoid about screen burn-in when I watch content that's not exactly 16:9.

I also bought a plasma before christmas, and from my (non exhaustive) investigations you don't need to worry about this in 2009 unless you display white on black static image for hours on end. IE watching a couple of movies in a row with shifting frames (bright and dark scenes) with black bars is not a problem.

What could be a problem though, is if you accidently leaves the XBMC gui onscreen for a long period of time. Luckily a "fade effect" is available in XBMC which lowers the brightness (10-90% adjustable IIRC).

[althekiller]

There's already a "blackbarcolor" (or something along those lines) tag in advancedsettings.xml (see wiki for more info). I believe it just does greyscale, changing full colors would be annoying as all hell IMO.

[quidividi]

There's already a "blackbarcolor" (or something along those lines) tag in advancedsettings.xml (see wiki for more info). I believe it just does greyscale, changing full colors would be annoying as all hell IMO.

Well, my hope is that it wouldn't jump out at you. More or less blend with the image on screen till you don't really notice it any more.

I've tried making some mock-ups to hopefully explain my point a little better.

[quidividi]

I believe it just does greyscale, changing full colors would be annoying as all hell IMO.

My hope is that it would be easily ignorable. At most it would just add extra colour to a scene but nothing that the video itself isn't putting out.

I've tried making some quick mock-ups which hopefully explain my idea better then my words do.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3462/3218...f814_o.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3479/3218...f856_o.jpg

Wayne

Sorry about the double post, the first time I replied the "Waiting for a moderator's approval" message disappeared too quickly for me to process what it said.

[Freddo]

that actually looks really cool but how feasible is that sort of processing in realtime?

[quidividi]

that actually looks really cool but how feasible is that sort of processing in realtime?

That is a big concern. I did those up in gimp with a zoom blur from the centre set on bust to stretch the colour to the corners and then a gaussian blur set to 75 to remove any sort of detail. After which I just slapped the video frame back on top.

On a my P4 laptop that wasn't quick even with these small images. Doing it in real time can't be any easier.

Maybe someone who knows what they're doing can find ways to cheat with the math to get the same results??

[Freddo]

maybe shaders could do the same thing a lot faster though, I'm not an expert but it sounds like a shaddery sort of thing to do.

[topfs2]

The discussed implementation idea of ambilight will make it possible to use in skinning aswell (basically you´ll just get a RGB tripplet from calculated light) this could probably be used for this, it wont be as your mockups but it would be really close. The whole blackbar would change color according to video color, and it could be different up and down

[mechaichezilla]

Hi,

I didn't find any similar suggestion, so I hope, it hasn't been made yet. How about a 4:3 burn-in protection for Plasa TVs, when watching 4:3 material (or other non 16:9 stuff)? This is what I have in mind:

http://yfrog.com/0g43plasmaj

The layer in the back is the same image that is seen in front, only stretched to 16:9 and blurred, so it doesn't distract you from watching. This should be much more plasma friendly than the black bars. And also much more eye friendly than the butt-ugly grey bars you can turn on on Panasonic-TVs

If you could put in something like that, a lot of plasma-users sure would love you - even more than we already do

[ultrabrutal]

I would find your example extremely "distracting", but I agree a grey color for the pillars is a good thing. This can in fact be enabled via advancedsettings xml. It's been years though since I did it so cannot remember the syntax. Search forum or wiki