Auto zoom letterboxed content
Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 1:19 am
A very cool feature I would LOVE is AUTO ZOOM on letterboxed content. My old plasma TV had this feature on its S-Video input and it worked great for a standalone sat receiver. Now I am using DVI with a PC to my plasma and this feature is not available via DVI input. The TV was 16:9 widescreen, but many North American programs now are 4:3 letterboxed (such as MythBusters). This means the video is 4:3, but has black bars on top and bottom to make it widescreen. This is VERY annoying, because this results in a huge black border on all sides of the picture leaving only a 34" picture on my 50" TV!
I'm not sure how the AUTO ZOOM algorithm worked, but I think it looked for bars on the top & bottom of a certain size with an average brightness below a certain level (dark gray bars also triggered it sometimes), and if they remain long enough (about 2-seconds), this triggered the TV into zoom mode so the letterboxed 4:3 fully fills a 16:9 widescreen. Once activity was detected in the letterbox areas (i.e. a 4:3 commercial that fills the entire 4:3 display area), the display would un-zoom.
I'm not sure how the AUTO ZOOM algorithm worked, but I think it looked for bars on the top & bottom of a certain size with an average brightness below a certain level (dark gray bars also triggered it sometimes), and if they remain long enough (about 2-seconds), this triggered the TV into zoom mode so the letterboxed 4:3 fully fills a 16:9 widescreen. Once activity was detected in the letterbox areas (i.e. a 4:3 commercial that fills the entire 4:3 display area), the display would un-zoom.