I now have a Hopper 3, but this problem appears to be with the Carbon UI software. I first saw it when I installed the test version of Carbon UI on my old Hopper with sling, and now it persists with the Hopper3. Since my first Hopper 1, I have been sending the composite output of the Hopper to an old Radio Shack stereo RF modulator, and distributing the SD quality signal to a small 16x9 TV in our kitchen, and one in my workroom. Before Carbon UI on the hopper 1 &2, all video coming out of the composite connection was anamorphic. On an old SD 4x3 TV, all the video looked squished and tall, however with shown full screen on a 16x9 TV, it looked normal. With the Carbon UI, it appears the developers decided to output 16x9 video on composite as letterbox so the video would look normal on a 4x3 TV. I am okay with this, and can still zoom the video on the 16x9 TV to full screen while losing a little of the SD resolution. Unfortunately, the developers left the guide as anamorpic. With the letterbox video zoomed to full screen, the zoomed anamorphic guide now spills off the screen and is unusable. I can switch the kitchen TV back and forth, but this is frustrating. I would prefer they provided the option to turn off the letterboxed video on composite, and return to all anamorphic. However, I would be okay if they would at least be consistent (all letterbox or all anamophic) between the video and guide.
Hopper 3 composite output video letterbox, but guide is anamorphic
- Thread starter md_paul
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The 16x9 Kitchen TV is a small regular HDTV with all the standard inputs including NTSC and ATSC RF. The hopper is in our living room. The HDMI HD output of the hopper is going to a 55" HD TV in the living room. The RF (Channel 3) signal from the Hopper's composite output uses the homes existing RG6 cables to distribute the SD NTSC signal to TV's in other rooms like I used to do with the 722. I use home distributed RF in the kitchen because it is the only way to have the kitchen TV audio in sync with the sound from the living room TV in a room about 20 feet away. There is no way to have a Joey in the kitchen and have the sound/video in perfect sync with the main hopper.
I did not realize a device like this existed. It's reasonably priced, and I think this will solve the issue without the need for a software change from DISH. Thank you.
- Paul
In case you can't see it, he linked to an item on Amazon that converts Component HD video (up to 1080p) to Compsite Video. Plugging this into the compnent video output on the Hopper will (hopefully) avoid the software generated letterbox video that Dish created for their built in composite output in the Carbon UI.
Because if you read the original post you'd see that a joey wouldn't be in sync with the hopper.
OK, understand, I missed that in post #3. I am still on S529 in my HWSs. I hope DISH has the RCA video output changed back to the way it is in the old CUI before I get the new one. If not, guess I will try out that Component Video AV Converter. Good info n0qcu on the converter. I have three RF Modulators on my three HWSs and don't want to have to deal with the leterbox issues. I hope sometime DISH will upgrade the Hoppers so they can sync recordings to other TVs, I would probably do away with my RF Modulators. What does anamorphic mean?
Composite video is 480i video that was originally designed to be viewed on a 4x3 video screen. Anamorphic composite video is taking a 16x9 video source and squeezing it to a 4x3 image. Everything in the image looks distorted skinny and taller than is should be if you look at the image on a 4x3 display. However, if you display it on a television that is capable of stretching the 4x3 image out to 16x9 (like most modern HDTVs), it looks normal.
The advantage of anamorphic is that it preserves the maximum 480i resolution if you have a widescreen TV. The disadvantage of anamorphic video is that if you have a 4x3 TV, there is no easy way to view the image without distortion. This is probably why Dish decided to go with letterbox on composite output.
I stole this text from the crutchfield TV glossary:
"Anamorphic video
Refers to widescreen video images that have been "squeezed" to fit a narrower video frame when stored on DVD. These images must be expanded (un-squeezed) by the display device. Most of today's TVs employ a screen with 16:9 aspect ratio, so that anamorphic and other widescreen material can be viewed in its proper proportions. When anamorphic video is displayed on an old-fashioned TV with a 4:3 screen, images appear unnaturally tall and narrow."
