Photo aspect ratio squashed

Who Max?

Who Max?

New Member
Hi all,
I recently acquired a HDR Fox T2 500GB machine - and very pleased I am with it too!

however, I've noticed that when I display photos on it, the aspect ratio is squashed in the horizontal direction (or stretched in the vertical).

Can anyone explain to me how to get the machine to display them correctly?

I've got an old CRT 4:3 telly.
The aspect ratio on the hummy is set to 4:3.
Standard firmware.
I've played with all the different display settings (Auto, 16:9, 14:9, centre) and nothing makes a difference.

Can anyone tell me what I've overlooked?

Thanks - and thanks to all those who obviously put in so much work in making the hummy a truly customisable home machine.

WhoMax?
 
It's only an opinion because I've never played with photos, but my hunch is that the Humax is disregarding the aspect ratio settings when displaying jpegs and what you get is a presumption of 16:9 squashed into 4:3.
 
I think the hummy will try to display what you give it ie if you give it a 16:9 photo it will display the whole photo and if you display it on a 4:3 TV then I'm afraid it will be squashed, The hummy has no crop facility. Try cropping a photo to 4:3 before sending it to the hummy and see if it's ok.
 
brianmt said:
I think the hummy will try to display what you give it ie if you give it a 16:9 photo it will display the whole photo and if you display it on a 4:3 TV then I'm afraid it will be squashed, The hummy has no crop facility. Try cropping a photo to 4:3 before sending it to the hummy and see if it's ok.
Click to expand...

Hi Brian,
thanks for your reply.
I resized a photo to standard def 4:3 ratios (i.e. 640x480 or thereabouts) and transferred it over to the humax.
As I expected, the aspect ratio was still squashed in the horizontal direction.
With all the photos I've transferred over, the humax tries to fit the height of the photo to the height of the telly, adding blank space to left and right as necessary (e.g. for portrait aspect photos). But it's over squashing in the horizontal direction, hence "thin tall people". :(
Although the device gives you the option to set the video output and display to 4:3, it would seem this works fine for video content, but for photos it seems to assume a wide screen display. That's the only explanation I can think of, and (if I'm right) would seem to point to a software fault on the machine.

I would like to hear from others who, perhaps, display photos stored on their devices, or from any willing volunteers who might be kind enough to try it on their setup and see if the results differ.

WhoMax?
 
I've got quite a few photos on my machine and they display ok, but I am using a wide screen telly. What I can do is switch my telly to 4:3 and see if I can recreate your situation. I presume you are using a scart so i will stick a scart in and have a mess about. If I get hold of the telly from the family tonight, Ill give it a try otherwise tomorrow.
Just a though what happens if you play the pics from a usb stick ?
 
I've done a test, not exactly reproducing what you are doing but an indication none-the-less.

I created a test card jpeg file 1600x1600 pixels containing rectangles of 1:1, 4:3, and 16:9 aspect ratios and with a circle in the middle. I also saved versions cropped to 1200x1600 and 900x1600. If anybody wants them I can make them available (tell me how).

Bearing in mind I am displaying to a 16:9 TV via HDMI with the Humax video preference set to 16:9, the three test cards all displayed properly filling the full height of the screen, with a circular circle, with the width only filling the screen on the 16:9 test card.

I then set the preferences to 4:3, and the live video got stretched horizontally as if a 4:3 output was being stretched to 16:9 by the TV. However, despite this the test cards displayed exactly the same as before.

These results support what I hypothesised before: regardless of the actual aspect ratio of the TV or the video output setting, the picture viewer presumes a 16:9 output and then the TV compresses that into the 4:3 ratio if that is the case.
 
mmmmm interesting , I've had a little mess about as well , bit confused but it's getting clearer . Some of my pics look wrong because my old camera was an odd format, tall people but my Olympus dslr the pics are 4:3 hence when I see them on my tv in 16:9 they look ok . I'd be interested in seeing your test files you can email them to a throway address i have
michael.fitz123@googlemail.co.uk
I'm with you on your hypothingamyjig . I'll do some more test tomorrow
 
Never having played with this aspect of the Humax before, I completed the experiment by uploading one of my big panoramic files - 12539x2264 pixels, 9.55MB. I am very pleased to report is displayed perfectly as a letterbox, filling the width of the TV screen.

This seems to be an ideal way to present a slide show - prepare the playlist and then FTP them to the box for display - except that the control seems very limited: preview individually in a small frame, or run the show and only have a choice of 3, 5, or 10 seconds per slide. You can speed up the transition by pressing left and right, but not slow it down*! I note also you can use the preview and the red button to mark a sub-set of the slides and only those will be shown. Annoyingly, if you only mark one for display, it still changes the slide in a loop of one every n seconds ("Processing...")!

* Correction: I found the answer - press pause. That freezes the loop, and then you can step through at your leisure (though you can only step on or back when the info bar is on screen).

Test cards sent, but delivery failure.
 
Thanks for trying to send me the test slides should have been .com not co.uk.
Anyway did some tests, i took 2 pictures of the bbc test card , one with a 4:3 camera and the other one with a 16:9 camera. When I played these back they both played as expected, circle on the test card was a circle on the TV (wide screen tv), if i was being hyper critical both pictures were slightly squashed in the horizontal direction but nothing that would cause anyone to complain. I also played back a picture from an old digital camera which was 5:3 and that looked ok and just as you did I played a panoramic picture ,it was a perfect letterbox.
I think it's fair to say that the Hummy outputs 16:9 only in photo mode and to be quite honest 4:3 tele's are now obsolete apart from the "gold " channels nothing is transmitted in 4:3 so manufactures, like Humax, have dropped support for an obsolete format.
It's nice to know that photo's, as far as I'm concerned ,do display correctly must admit though that I had a sneaky feeling that I would find a problem.
 
Being as I had surprising success uploading a screen shot in another topic, I shall try to post the test cards as images here:

AspectRatioTest_1-1.jpg

Success! I presume anybody who wants them can right-click and "save picture as" (save them as jpg). The above is the 1:1 aspect ratio test card (1600x1600 pixels). Note also that the full image includes a white border - not very good for viewing in the topic but much better on the TV screen.
 
Guys,

thanks for all the feedback.

BH - I downloaded all 3 of your test cards, and they ALL get squashed in the horizontal! :(

I've owned this telly for over 10 years, and I've been waiting for it to break down so that I can justify going out and blowing a small fortune on a fancy big flat plasma or LCD. But as Sod's Law seems to be in control here, the dam thing keeps working like a charm every day. :rolleyes:

Clearly, I need to bite the bullet on this one and go and blow some cash on some tech, as my current CRT looks like it will probably last another 10 years!

Thanks again guys.
 
I think it's safe to say the hummy assumes a16:9 tv , anyway go spoil yourself get a brand new shiny tv and I bet you find you're 10 year old crt was dearer than the one you buy. Never been better value !!
 
Who Max? said:
Clearly, I need to bite the bullet on this one and go and blow some cash on some tech, as my current CRT looks like it will probably last another 10 years!
Click to expand...

Unfortunately it's not all plain sailing even then. Beware HDMI issues, check the forums to see which TVs work with the Hummy and which don't. My LG32LD690 works fine, but is probably unavailable now.
 
I've got a 42 inch Lg can't remember number but that has always been fine never had a problem. Seems sony's suffered a bit, no surprise there, if one company can make non standard " standard " sets then it has to be Sony. I've used sony equipment professionally for 25 years and have never found things to be straightforward, Nice pics though.
 
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