Live TV and DVR frequently (but inconsistently) letterbox the entire recording (top, bottom, and sides)

General Discussions Plex Features
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Hi All -

I have a gut feeling that this is a FAQ with an answer that can be linked, but I have been online, reddit, the forums, and Google in general and I don’t appear to be able to create the correct search string to find my answer. I am turning to the collective knowledge of this group. Thank you in advance for the time and help.

Live TV and DVR videos recorded or played through Plex often have an incorrect aspect ratio, leaving with letterboxes around the entire video (likely a 4:9 recording being saved as 16:9). I’ve noticed this in the past on a single show months ago, and thought it was that particular channel. Recently, it’s become more common than uncommon.

I’ve replayed the recorded DVR file in VLC, and the letter box is there too, so I believe that this is happening in recording, not play back. I have found that I can also reproduce this in Live TV playback within Plex. I was watching MASH for example, and got the letter-boxing behavior. Switching to Wheel of Fortune on another channel, I have true 16:9. A third channel in live TV gives me true 4:9 with letter-boxing correctly on the left and right. When I load the channel playing MASH in the HDHomeRun app directly, the playback is full 4:9. Therefore, I’m lead to believe the issue is somewhere in the interface between the HDHomeRun device and Plex. All channels show as HD in the channel guide.

I have deleted the DVR from Plex and reinstalled it. I have enabled and disabled DVR Transcoding in Plex’s DVR settings. No impact on the behavior from these changes. For good measure, I’ve power cycled the DVR a couple of times as well, because you know, it solves so many technical issues.

Server version: 1.13.8.5395
OS: Windows 10 Pro
HDHomeRun PRIME with Firmware 20180817

If anyone has seen this before and knows what I need to kick, I would be so grateful. If, in my ignorance on how Plex interfaces with the DVR, I have failed to provide any key information, please let me know and I’ll happily expand on what I’ve got going on.

Thank you again!

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This tv show was made at a time when tv sets were 4:3 aspect ratio.
It appears that the station is broadcasting it with black borders added to the sides of the original picture, so the video is now 16:9
And that is what Plex is recording. It doesn’t alter the video stream in any way. It doesn’t know that what it is recording is actually a 4:3 video with black borders added to the sides.
If you now play this “16:9 video” on a screen that is taller than 16:9, you will see black borders on all sides. The black border left and right are contained in the recorded video, and the black borders at the top&bottom are added by the plex client, because it wants to show you the full area of what (it thinks) is a 16:9 video.

43_to169_to43
43_to169_to43800×600 24.1 KB

white = the original 4:3 picture
light grey = borders added by the tv station to fill a 16:9 screen
dark grey = areas of your screen for which there are no pixels in the video file

The only 2 ways to that I know to watch such a file in Plex are:

  1. use a tv which has a ‘Zoom’ feature
  2. take the recorded file and put it through Handbrake to crop out the black borders, thus transcoding it again
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Hi - thanks a ton for the input. You may be right, but the reason that I pause here is that when I play the same channel in the HDHomeRun app, there is not any letter boxing. I suppose that the HD app auto-crops, and that would account for the display difference. That application is so simple though, that it would surprise me.

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