Getting Youtube etc on an old 1983 CRT TV

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by shaunhw

I wish someone would make one with a horizontal stretch and clip edges feature, so I can watch Star Trek via Netflix on my old colour telly, without black bars and a squashed picture!

I've got to disagree with you there, I like to see the whole frame without any stretching. Were you a fan of the Pan & Scan technique?

How do you like 4:3 content displayed on a 16:9 screen?

Graham.
G3ZVT

[shaunhw]

I'd rather see letter box mode, or clipped sides, rather than squashed faces on a 4:3 television.

In the case of Star Trek Netflix sends this out in 16:9 mode with black borders either side and you see this on my old telly. So clipping nothing but black won't be a problem!

The Panasonic box I use has Netflix on it. It also has a side clip option but this doesn't work with the network applications it has on it.

Cheers,
Shaun.

[julie_m]

The free and Open Source software "ffmpeg" can convert just about any kind of video to any other, even resampling to change the frame rate, aspect ratio and cropped area -- but, it's purely command-line driven, and I appreciate that not everyone is as comfortable with a command line interface as I am.

ffmpeg is released under the GPL, which can be summarised in four words as "Not sharing is stealing". This means if you incorporate it wholesale into another program, you must also release the whole thing under the GPL. But there is nothing stopping anyone from writing a program which requires the user to download ffmpeg separately, and then interacts with it solely via the command line as a separate process, and never releasing the Source Code to that. It would be considered a totally separate work in its own right, and not require special permission beyond that already granted by the GPL and the Law of the Land.

So. there should be a GUI program that can generate the necessary ffmpeg commands to change the frame rate and cut off the edges to give you a 4 by 3 picture at 25 frames per second.

[Voxophone]

Originally Posted by shaunhw

I wish someone would make one with a horizontal stretch and clip edges feature, so I can watch Star Trek via Netflix on my old colour telly, without black bars and a squased picture!

The "PC Laptop VGA to AV RCA TV Monitor S-video Adapter Converter Switch Box" mentioned by Peter earlier in the thread can do this.

It gives you full control of width, height and horizontal/vertical position. You can just stretch the picture sideways till the black bars are outside the edges of the screen. It also lets you control brightness, contrast etc. which is handy to avoid adjusting controls on the TV all the time.

It needs a VGA port which may be less common nowadays but there are probably adapters available if needed to convert from HDMI.

Liam

[shaunhw]

Originally Posted by julie_m

The free and Open Source software "ffmpeg" can convert just about any kind of video to any other, even resampling to change the frame rate...

The free "Handbrake" program I mentioned here actually controls ffmpeg in the background to do all the things that can do, makes it really easy to use!
You can see the ffmeg commands listed in the logs Handbrake can make!
Regards,
Shaun.

[julie_m]

That sounds as though it would be a really good way of learning to use ffmpeg from the command line.

I pretty much taught myself SQL commands using PHPMyAdmin .....

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by shaunhw

The free "Handbrake" program I mentioned here actually controls ffmpeg in the background to do all the things that can do, makes it really easy to use!
You can see the ffmeg commands listed in the logs Handbrake can make!

There are any number of graphical front-ends for ffmpeg. "SUPER" is one I have used in the past.

Graham.
G3ZVT

[shaunhw]

I've not seen "Super." I must take a look. I believe Handbrake uses ffmeg for some MPG formats but other codecs for h264/MP4 creation/transcoding so it does much more than just drive ffmpeg!

I'm going to try using the computer's HDMI output with it's screen set to 4:3 screen mode, a ten pound cheapo HDMI to PAL composite converter connected to the UHF modulator to see if I can play YouTube and Netflix videos directly from the web on the Bush CTV167.

I'll try to report back on that after the weekend when I get the time to try it out. I don't yet know what the HDMI converter will do with 60hz computer input.


Regards,
Shaun.

[Eidolon]

Originally Posted by shaunhw

A point about YouTube videos and very old televisions -

I've been using a Panasonic blu ray disk recorder with Freeview HD to play some of these, from an SD card - About last Panasonic high spec model made with composite video output. Unfortunately this thing plays these back at their original frame rate even via composite output - and 60hz drives my old Bush CTV 167 crazy. Though colour is there there's server pulsating and wobbling on the picture, along with severe misconvergence due to the incorrect frame rate. A good solution is to try using the excellent (and completely free) "Handbrake" software for windows to convert the file from 60 field/sec to 50, when all is well again! I've a few youtube testcard etc. videos done like this, pulled via "KeepVid.com"

I've also just got one of the HDMI to composite converters, which was about 12 pounds from Amazon, but these can't deal with the aspect ratio, but a computer suitable screen mode like 1024x768 will probably fix this. I'll try this when time permits and post the results if no one else does.

I wish someone would make one with a horizontal stretch and clip edges feature, so I can watch Star Trek via Netflix on my old colour telly, without black bars and a squased picture!

Best - Shaun.

I have found that the PS3, set to PAL 576i output converts everything on Youtube to the required signal, as the Wii did. ONe problems that the PS3 has though, is that it seems to be treating everything on Youtube as being in HD and downscaling it to 576i, based on all the edge shimmer it displays. The Wii did not have that problem. BUt nonetheless I at least have Youtube back in the front room, and old tv shows that are on there aren;t in HD anyway, so they look fine.

I also got iplayer back as a nice side effect. Demand5 only plays in a squished format, it won;t adapt to 4:3, and 4OD has some kind of fault, it locks up the machine if I try to use it.
BUt still other good things came of this, I can now run my ps3 games in here too, the HDD is good as I can put video on it. I have found that if I download from iplayer and put it on the HDD, then the ps3 has a zoom mode which can remove the bars from the sides of Top of the Pops etc so it fits the screen correctly. Why it can;t do that on iplayer as well I don't know.

The ps3 wont convert ntsc dvds or blu-rays to 576i though, so they're no good in this machine.

I need to see about swapping the HDD into my ps3 in the other room as it only has a 80gb one in it, but i'm not sure if I can move all content across yet.

But overall, I'm quite pleased by the results from the ps3