When playing a standard definition video, or a 720p/24 video, is there any way to completely avoid upscaling?

Okay. :slight_smile: Note that this happens in Kodi 17 on a Raspberry Pi as well. (There are no whitelist resolutions in v17, of course, but you can lock the output to 720x576 or 720x480 in the system settings.)

I think there’s a lot of overlap between us but it’s getting a bit late for clear thinking. Just to complete the picture, can you paste the output of cat /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/edid? That is how a TV tells a source whether it will accept 4:3 modes.

I think there’s some confusion here. It sounds like Kodi is doing the right thing; or we’d have seen more than one report of this.

Please upload affected files to https://collab.osmc.tv/s/cMZapJrisFV2DxD.

@grahamh: available under https://collab.osmc.tv/apps/files/?dir=/Shared%20Files/angry.sardine.samples&fileid=10096. Will test after upload.

Cheers

Sam

Okay, but tomorrow. :sleeping:

Well, how many people actually use 480p or 576p as their output resolution? How many of those play 4:3 DVD rips? And how many of them simply haven’t noticed that there’s an issue because the TV’s aspect ratio setting is locked to 16:9, meaning it scales the downscaled image back up and gives you the correct aspect ratio on the screen, with just a slight loss of horizontal resolution? Even I might not have spotted the problem if I weren’t in the habit of switching aspect ratio manually.

Very few users have 16:9 enabled. They use Just Scan or 1:1 after years of us nagging.

If I play something in 4:3 like Futurama. I expect to see it in 4:3 format. I don’t want it 16:9d where everyone looks short and fat.

Vero should be doing that. Please attach a sample if not the case. I’m also interested in knowing if it occurs on v17 or not

Sam

I agree, that’s intolerable. But if your media player is outputting 720p or above, the TV doesn’t need to switch aspect ratio for the video to look right.

Let’s say, for example, that the display has a resolution of 1920x1080. If the DVD is tagged as 4:3, the eventual video image on the screen needs to be 1440x1080. There are four possible ways to achieve that:

A: Media player scales 720x480 up to 1440x1080, adds black bars at the sides to pad it, and outputs the result as 1920x1080.

B: Media player outputs raw 720x480, TV scales that up to 1440x1080, adds black bars, and displays.

C: Media player scales 720x480 up to 1920x1080, outputs that with no bars. TV then downscales that image to 1440x1080 and adds black bars.

D: Media player downscales 720x480 to 540x480 to produce a 720x480 image that includes the black bars, and sends that to the TV; TV upscales that to 1920x1080.

Observations:

1: If you’re outputting 1080p from the media player, then option A is the correct approach, and the TV’s aspect ratio setting is always 16:9. The TV doesn’t know whether the incoming signal was originally 16:9 or 4:3; by the time it reaches the TV, it’s already been corrected for aspect ratio.

2: If the media player is outputting 1080p, option C is never the correct way to go: it introduces an extra scaling stage into the pipeline.

3: Most importantly, if the media player is outputting 720x480, option B is the correct approach. There are absolutely NO situations where it should be attempting option D. And yet, that’s what Kodi is doing in my case. You said:

I can’t over-emphasise this: regardless of what the EDID says, that approach is never, ever correct. Kodi is definitely NOT doing the right thing, here.

I don’t think the Vero 4K is capable of producing 720x480 output on version 17, is it…? The Raspberry Pi can, and yes, it exhibits the same problem on v17.

I’ll upload a sample file and EDID info later. I can’t do any testing on Vero, because I don’t have mine - Sam has it: he’s been testing it for a possible Ethernet defect. But I’ll get some RPi data for you.

As mentioned earlier, I don’t have access to my Vero 4K+ at the moment, as it’s in for testing.

On a Raspberry Pi running OSMC (latest Leia test build), that file doesn’t exist. :frowning:

grab-logs -z should do similar

It says it’s uploaded logs to https://paste.osmc.tv/fenulerafu

I’ve uploaded a short (11s) test clip that I happened to have lying around - it’s 576i/50. Let me know if you need a longer one.

Good. So your EDID is advertising 4:3 modes. You will see I’ve prodded the Kodi guys.

Yes, I saw that, thanks. :grinning:

Is there anything else you need from me at the moment?

Did they ever get back to you?

nope

Hi grahamh
I can report that this is still an issue with Kodi 19.3 on the Vero 4k+
Would it be possible to contact the Kodi developers again please?

This issue would benefit DVD playback at native resolution

This is a 3 year old thread. I’d suggest you open a new thread and include debug logs so we can verify your settings. Also you are asking about DVD playback, that would not be 720P.

Have you tried using the Whitelist?

This might be it about 576p for PAL DVD
I fret making a new thread because it might be a Kodi issue
I didn’t try the whitelist i changed the resolutions on the GUI and checked screen calibration
I would prefer not to have to post logs because I checked on two different TVs with different supported resolutions
It’s resolutions below 720 that are scaled to 4:3

Just to note that this has been working correctly on the Vero 4K for a long time, now. But you do need to use the whitelist feature to make it work.

Please check out my whitelist guide for the settings: [HowTo] Guide to the Kodi whitelist function and related settings

In particular, you need to whitelist 480p and 576p modes, and set “Display 4:3 videos as” to “Use HDMI AVI Signalling”. But see my guide for more detail.

Thanx for the guide, I’ve read it before
I tried hdmi avi signaling but if I select 480p or 575p for the gui and check screen calibration the square is not square
angry.sardine if you try the same, I believe you will see the problem. Try setting the GUI to 576p and go to screen calibration and look at the square please.