Seems to me Humax have busted aspect ratio control via HDMI.

Before with my Panasonic it would force the TV to 16:9 from 4:3 and pillar box 4:3 programs.

Now 16:9 programs show 4:3 with grey bars at the sides.

If only they could have tested the release over the last nine months before launching it

Automan.

Update:
I have found my TV remote control and if I set the default aspect ratio to auto rather than 4:3 that seems to work.

However that is of little use as all my HDMI gadgets go via my AMP and all the rest of my HDMI gadgets work properly and set the aspect accordingly.

As did my HDR until I upgraded it...

Automan.

Same with my Panasonic TV.

Set the TV to 16:9 and the PVR to 4:3 pillar box. This does not screw up any widescreen transmissions, and shows the 4:3 transmissions properly.

Previously, as you say, the PVR would tell the TV whether something was 16:9 or 4:3, it doesn't do this anymore though. Looks like perhaps the PVR is adding its own black bars to the picture if it's a 4:3 broadcast and sending it over as 16:9.

The aspect ratio problem is only apparent to me if I set V.Format to 'Original'. If I select 1080i then all works OK except that it then uses the (IMO) inferior Humax upscaler.
With 'Original' on 576i channels I have to manually select either 4:3 or 16:9 on the TV depending on the channel content to get the correct aspect ratio.
This was never a problem before!

My LG 32" 1080p TV in the bedroom seems okay but my main Panasonic 46" TV does not.

It is okay via RGB scart but via HDMI my old aetting of 4:3 on the TV does not work.

Automan.

Have you set it up as I said?

Set 16:9 on the panasonic TV. On the PVR, set the screen to 16:9 and the display to 4:3.

I have the lg7000 32" 1080p I have no aspect ratio problems since the upgrade which I did ota.In fact I have encountered no problems with any part of the download.Could the problems previous posters are having be in anyway tvs (from certain manufacturers)related?or perhaps a problem with the download in a particular region?

Pioneer and Panasonic TVs at least are affected. It's not a big problem though, you just need to change your settings and it's OK again.

Another Panasonic user here having the same problems with .11 firmware.
Had no problems previously, it just "worked".

Frank

Agree with that - I am also a Panasonic TV owner with same widescreen problems introduced with .11

What chance is there for a fix for this?

I am having aspect ratio problems on the HD & HDR have just emailed Humax.

The big problem I have is the same on both the HD & HDR STBs:
Before the updates both STBs were OK with the following setup using HDMI:
Screen Ratio 16:9
Display Format 4:3 Pillar Box
Vformat Original (as I prefer the Sony TVs to upscale the SD channels)

After the updates with the above setup I have found the following with different settings of Vformat with SD channels:

Original 16:9 transmissions are squashed sideways to approx 4:3
4:3 transmissions are squashed sideways to less than 4:3

576i 16:9 transmissions are squashed sideways to approx 4:3
4:3 transmissions are squashed sideways to less than 4:3

576p 16:9 transmissions are squashed sideways to approx 4:3
4:3 transmissions are squashed sideways to less than 4:3

720p 16:9 transmissions displays correct at 16:9
4:3 transmissions displays correct at 4:3

1080i 16:9 transmissions displays correct at 16:9
4:3 transmissions displays correct at 4:3

I would but as I mentioned the unit is fed via my amp and all my other HDMI devices that work correctly are scewed when the tv is set to show everthing at 16:9

e.g.
Blu-Ray
Sky+ HD
PopCorn
HD DVD

They all still know about wide screen switching but now my Humax does not

Automan.

Interesting that it's changed. A long standing issue with Sky HD boxes is that some TV makes (like my Samsung) never have switched with HDMI. My previous Toshiba did.

When I emailed Samsung the response clearly stated that in their opinion HDMI only supported 16:9. Other people have said the same thing - that it's up to the source device to add pillar boxing.

If the Humax used to cause a switch but now doesn't it seems to confirm that HDMI is perfectly capable of indicating the ratio. That means either my TV is at fault or the Sky HD box. Ironically both are made by Samsung

I have a Panasonic Freesat TV.

I have the TV set to 4:3 permanently. This allows it to display 4:3 programmes from its internal tuner as normal and then detect when there is a 16:9 programme on and it expands the picture. Aspect ratio switching also works correctly in this mode from SCART sources. It seems a bit perverse to set it to 4:3 to allow AR switching, but this is the way my old Sony CRT worked too.

With my Foxsat HDR, which is connected via HDMI, I have the settings as follows:

Screen Ratio: 16:9
Display format: 4:3 pillar box
V-format: 1080i

This performs aspect ratio switching perfectly. Or rather, the box auto-pads 4:3 pictures with black bars either side and sends 16:9 anyway – I gather that HD resolutions are inherently/always 16:9 anyway. The TV doesn’t indicate that it’s changed aspect ratio like it does when displaying a channel from its internal tuner.

If I change V-format to 576i (or Original), it doesn’t work. In this case the TV has to be put into Auto mode. From then on, AR switching works perfectly and the TV indicates it is swtiching to 16:9 or 4:3 as appropriate. I don’t know if this was the case before the upgrade as I never used it in this mode.

Remember that 576i is inherently 4:3 and 1080i is inherently 16:9 so presumably that’s why the TV needs to be set differently?

Something has changed, but I don't know if the Humax is now doing things correctly or whether it's other devices that have got HMDI wrong!

Before the upgrade, and before I heard that there might be a problem, I think I had my Display Format set as Auto. I didn't really understand what it meant and I had thought that setting it to 4:3 Pillar Box would cause it to squish 16:9 into 4:3! But I'd always had a problem with 4:3 channels like the Zone channels in this mode - they would always be stretched to 16:9, whereas my TV's internal freesat tuner showed them in proper 4:3. So prior to the upgrade, I never had proper AR switching anyway! I had discussed this with a friend of mine whose Sky box does exactly the same thing via HDMI, so I thought nothing could be done.

I do wonder if in fact the Humax is now getting it right, but we've always had our set ups wrong in the past to cater for the fact that it didn't work properly before??? Certainly, with V-format set to 1080i, things seem to be working perfectly. Some people want Original format though and this is where problems seem to lie. I can't tell if my TV's scaler is better than the Humax or vice versa so it doesn't matter to me, but I just didn't like the slight second or two pause while the TV sorts itself out when changing between 4:3 and 16:9, so that's why I have it on 1080i.

This is, I imagine, because you are telling the box to output 576, which is a 4:3 resolution. It assumes your TV will be put into Wide mode to fill the screen, so it squishes the pictures anamorphically.


These are HD resolutions, i.e. inherently 16:9. The box will deal with 4:3 programmes in whatever way you specify with Display Format.

This might be the crux of the matter. Maybe a lot of TVs don't fully support HDMI switching, either it's not part of the spec or it's a later spec, I don't know. To make it more compatible, perhaps Humax have taken the control of the switching out of HDMI and back into the picture formatting within the box itself. Which messes up people who had their setups to rely on this, but it's just a matter of changing the ettings isn't it? The problem seems to be we have a mixture of devices that are doing different things. Whose to say which one is right when there doesn't seem to be an agreed standard?

I concur. It looks like the Humax used to send some fancy switching stuff which my Panasonic TV used to understand, but Humax have since ditched this and added their own black bars, perhaps to make it more compatible with other TVs.

Yes I think my thread title is a little wrong and the problem is the box never sends the HDMI 16:9 wide signal ever (or not in a format Panasonic TV's liked).

The HDR always padded out a 4:3 program with black bars to fill the 16:9 TV screen.

The snag is the TV is no longer told automatically to select 16:9 and thus you can end up with grey bars either side of the 4:3 frame) generated by the tv) which then has two black strip (generated by hdr) followed by a very narrow picture.

Bob_Cat, any comments please?

Automan.

Does the Humax at least allow you to turn off pillar boxing? Personally I detest seeing stretched 4:3 but I accept that some people prefer it to pillarboxing. Those people have a problem with some Sky channels (like Sky One) because there's no way of getting rid of the pillar boxes. Then again I have a problem with other channels because I have to keep manually changing the ratio with my remote.

A friend was in an even worse situation. His TV (a Panny I think) simply didn't let you change the ratio of an HDMI source. I think he's replaced it now.

What we really need are for the cheap-ass channels to grow up and start transmitting in 16:9. Very little content is actually 4:3 so at present not only are those channels jerking us around with switching issues but they are also either cropping the picture or dropping resolution by letter boxing and forcing us to zoom in.

One that I don't understand is Scifi HD when they show repeats of Medium. Every time I've checked they show it 16:9 with both letter- and pillar- boxing. By the time you've zoomed that out to full screen you've probably lost all the resolution gains. WTF is the point of that?

Yes. When you have Screen Ratio set to 16:9, the options for Display Format (i.e. how you want it to handle a 4:3 broadcast) are as follows:

Auto (not exactly sure of the effect of that)
4:3 Pillar Box
14:9 Pillar Box
16:9 Centre Cut Out (i.e. zooms to 16:9 but loses top and bottom of picture)
Anamorphic (squishes to a 4:3 frame and assumes your TV is set to Wide to expand it again, I guess)

Note that none of these distort the 4:3 image by stretching it, the box will not do that itself! That would only happen if the box is outputting 4:3 and you've set your TV to Wide instead of Auto or 4:3.

Right. Of course it still won't help the stretchy brigade if the channel is outputting pillarboxing.

Sigh.

Aspect ratios have been the bane of TV/cinema for over half a century now. Along comes a new standard and manages to add even more confusion and complexity. Oh - and removes automatic input selection while it's at it because manufacturers can't get together and agree how do it. Competition is clearly of more interest to them than making life easy for their customers.

Stupid, stupid sods the lot of them

This is the last straw for me. I know there are lots of people who don't care how distorted the image is so long as it fills the screen, but I am not one of them. The 16:9 flag was one of the few things on the Humax which worked perfectly.

Do those people who think that manually changing the aspect ratio to suit the programme is no problem actually change the setting for the adverts, or not bother?

I have never tried the SCART output. Does the switching still work with that?

HDR screen ratio setting on 16:9, Display on 4:3.

Diagnosis Murder on now, correctly showing in 4:3 via both HDMI & Scart. Switching to a 16:9 prog on ITV1, the display again correctly switches to 16:9 via both inputs.

Rgds.

Les.

Works fine with my Panasonic plasma. On Humax set to 16:9 display, 4:3 pillarbox. TV set to AUTO aspect. The Humax is "pillarboxing" 4:3 programmes correctly and sending 16:9 image with black bars, which is fine. My other HDMI source (DVD) sends the WIDE signal with 16:9 images or else sends a 4:3 image (without the WIDE signal). In that case the Panasonic pillarboxes the 4:3 image with grey bars. So both sources are working for me.

As far as I can see, everything is working fine, except not in the way that it did before and you just might need to revisit the settings on your TV and/or box to get it to work. I agree with you, I do not want a distorted image. But I'm not getting a distorted image, it all works fine for me!

What setting have you got your TV on, and what settings on the Humax have you got for:

V-Format
Screen Ratio
Display Format