So, overall, I like the player. I like the streamlined look, playback definitely seems smoother, and the Interface while playing, fast-forwarding, etc seems to be snappier. I have 1 small criticism. The display mode is full of Aspect Ratio settings, however, choosing original, also selects the original resolution instead of just the original AR, which is an odd choice. I don’t think anyone ever really wants to play 1280x720 on a 4K screen in the original resolution, I could be wrong, but it doesn’t make much sense to actually want that…
Maybe someone might want to check the actual resolution of the file. Someone may also want to do the opposite and playback at a higher resolution on a low resolution screen.
Use the default Letterbox setting and that will use the original AR of the file. Please note that the app uses the encoded AR, not the displayed AR.
Eh? I’m not sure I follow here.
In this scenario, would the frame stay within the bounds? or would it zoom in. ie, if someone were to play a 4K file on a 1080 screen, would you see 1920x1080 pixels taken directly from the center of the frame?
The “Feature” the app is attempting to mirror is a feature widely available on a lot of televisions and bluray players, and the “Original” is always the Original AR, Letterbox is for movies that are encoded with the top and bottom black bars to crop those out or to someone looking to do their own sort of 4:3 - > 16:9 masking without stretching the image. Stretch is to stretch the sides out to also do a 4:3 → 16:9 without losing top and bottom so it creates a stretched image. and Zoom is to just zoom in on the center, in case someone wants 2.35:1 to fit 1.85:1 screen without stretching.
Original has NEVER been “Use original resolution”.
When a video is encoded, the AR of the pixels is stored. Plex will use this. In the MKV standard, they allow a user settable AR that some players will use to override the encoded AR. Most (maybe all) Plex clients will ignore this.
Yes. You can see for yourself by playing a portrait mode video if you have any, or if you have a mobile device, playing back with the phone in portrait.
I don’t know if the intent was to mirror other devices.
Really? I mean, it’s a pretty blatant copy of something widely available on TVs and BluRay players, and is considered by most a “convenience feature”.
I see… That’s kind of good to know, but since I encode my own content it’s not really something I mess with I guess.
But really, the “Display Mode”, should either be worded wholly differently from the standard convenience feature (come up with better/different ways to say Original, Letterbox, Stretch, and Zoom) If it’s not meant to be a clone/mirror/copy of that feature. Or stay true to how that feature is supposed to work if it is supposed to be a mirror/copy/clone of that feature set (which I really suspect it is, and is just a sub-par implementation of it).
It does seem an odd choice. I just tested a 480p file on my OG Fire TV using “Original” on a 1080p TV. The results were amusing. I suspect it would be even more amusing on a 4K set.
But the new Stretch option looks very nice for some odd-aspect ratio DVR’d shows I have. Stargate SG-1 recorded from Comet uses an odd horizontally “squished” AR. Stretch deals with it nicely. It looks better than the playback from my Apple TV 4K.
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Oh yeah, I mean, Plex’s implementation of this feature might have it’s upside over the tv/bd player implementation in certain niche situations, I have seen Comet’s SG-1, it makes me thankful I have the entire DVD set, lol, but that’s pretty sweet it works to correct that.
I think what kind of threw me was that the first thing I played with the new player was a 4K HDR title. I went through all the settings and noticed them, noticed it was set to letterbox and swapped it to Original because of the future implications of “Letterbox” how I know it to function. And today, I played a 720p title that was DVR’d, and it was a damn postage stamp in the center of my screen… it took me a minute to figure out that “Oh… it’s that setting I messed with last night”. lol
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