Oh, BTW:.. Maybe I should start another thread for this, but I might give it a try here:

As I said, while with widescreen sources I only use cropping, I found the only acceptable method to get 4:3 to fullscreen is cropping and streching. I don't like the stretching either, but I like black borders even less.

Now: My TV set does the same, but uses some clever algorithm that leaves the center of the picture almost untouched while stretching the area close to the border (left&right) most. This is a very acceptable compromise for most shows on TV.

Is there any tool (command line tool preferred, as it should work as part of existing scripts) that would let me apply the same effect when encoding for the N800? I looked around but didn't really find anything for GNU/Linux.

When I have to do sophisticated video processing on Linux, I use AviSynth in Wine. It should be easy to make a AviSynth script that'll perform the smart stretching you want.

I don't know what people have against black bars, but cropping, pan'n'scan, distortion, etc. all of that ******** is a million times worse.

Exactly. "I just don't like them" is not a reason; it's a rationalization of some weakass argument.

I personally think the black borders are horrible. I would do anything to get rid of them. Anything, even at the expense of distortion, is better than any black borders. See this thread, 4 black borders decreases screen realestate by as much as 37%, http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...t=24349&page=3, thread #30. With decrease screen realestate, you sacrifice readability. Again, just like anything in life, personal preference takes precedent. You bet, WorldTV99 is working to give user a choice, black borders or distortion :-) .

For me, again, I cannot stand any black borders, it is ugly and annoying and distraction. That is just me.



bun

The 4-border situation is bad; it results from the source mat'l being 16:9 (or so) but re-encoded as 4:3 with borders top and bottom. Then this 4:3 image is played back on a 15:9 screen which gives borders left and right. In this case, the correct behavior is to crop to 16:9, recovering the original aspect ratio. This problem occurs during streaming because there's no way for the stream's size to change dynamically with content, so a stream is either 4:3 or 16:9, and content of the other ratio gets scaled and padded to fit.

Personally, I prefer to leave it in source ratio, and deal with any boxes. But I can see stretching 16:9 content ~7% to fill the screen, if the borders really annoy you; the deviation is minimal, and may actually compensate for perspective if you're viewing above or below axis. Cropping (or the level of stretching needed to fit 4:3) seems inexcusable to me, even if you don't crop past action-safe. There's image information there, why throw it out just because it's non-essential? That said, it's your tablet, so by all means watch video as you like.