My parent's TV in their computer room died, so I installed one of my old analog tuners in their Vista Home Premium desktop so my mom can watch TV while she browses the Internet. They have a widescreen monitor so Media Center launches widescreen, but since they only have an analog tuner, their TV signal will always be in 4x3. I know about the /widescreen command line switch to force Media Center to launch in 16x9 on a 4x3 screen, but is there a way to do the opposite and get Media Center to launch in 4x3 on a widescreen display?

Thanks,
Yogi

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Dell XPS 420: Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz, 6 GB RAM, 2.34 TB total storage
ATI Radeon HD 3600
Windows Vista Ultimate x64
2 ATI Digital Cable Tuners w/ CableCARD
1 HDHomeRun for 2 Clear QAM Tuners
3 Xbox 360 Extenders

You could use the zoom function to fill up the monitor, that's what I do for anything that's still in 4:3.

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My Media Center Blog

mabrown:

You could use the zoom function to fill up the monitor, that's what I do for anything that's still in 4:3.

Yeah, that's what I did for now. I put it on Zoom mode 4, "Intelligent Zoom," and my mom didn't really mind the stretching. However, even though they're running on a 22" widescreen monitor, I'd rather have the Media Center window take up less screen real estate by starting in 4x3 since that's the source of the format that they'll be watching. It's kind of a waste to be forced to stretch it. If Microsoft put the /widescreen command line switch in, I'm surprised they didn't put a switch in for forcing 4x3... even if it was only for testing plugins.

Yogi

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Dell XPS 420: Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz, 6 GB RAM, 2.34 TB total storage
ATI Radeon HD 3600
Windows Vista Ultimate x64
2 ATI Digital Cable Tuners w/ CableCARD
1 HDHomeRun for 2 Clear QAM Tuners
3 Xbox 360 Extenders