When I play a file and click menu and Aspect ratio I see 5 different settings: full / fit / fit (dar) / original / 16:9. What does these different aspect ratios actually mean? I've searched for explanations but I can't seem to find any that makes me understand.
Aspect ratio options are surprisingly limited on this box, but it's to do with SOC restrictions. Full expands vertically (if it can) to fill the frame height. Fit expands horizontally if not already Fit (DAR) expands horizontally if needed and honours DAR (Display Aspect Ratio) for example for anamorphic encodes - DVDs mainly. Not really needed these days. Original displays as per the file aspect ratio (and resolution and resolution settings!) 16:9 and 4:3 do exactly what they say. Depending on the source material, its aspect ratio, resolution and whether auto-resolution is enable or not, you'll find a lot of the options appear to do nothing but that's because the setting doesn't need to change to fullfil the criteria of the setting. Leave it on Fit (DAR) and you should be good for pretty much everything.
Thank you for the clarifications. Just one more question, when I read your descriptions I thought "Original" would be the setting to go with but then your last line goes with Fit (DAR)... can I ask you to clarify the advantages with Fit (DAR) over Original?
As far as I remember, "Original" used to use only SAR (Storage Aspect Ratio) whereas "Fit (DAR)" honours DAR but it seems that both "Fit" and "Original" now honour DAR too. So as far as I can tell, all three do the same job now, but personally I'd just stick on Fit (DAR) - I can't think of an instance where that wouldn't work.
Thank you once again! I tried Original with a concert film filmed for TV from the 70s and then the pic was just a small area in the middle of my TV. Fit (DAR) was full height.
Ah ok - so that's what it's supposed to do - use the original aspect and resolution, but it depends on how auto resolution is set and what video modes the EDID supports - for example if auto resolution is off, it should scale to the GUI resolution. If the file is 720x576 and the EDID doesn't support that, again it will scale to the GUI resolution.
so where exactly, please hold my hand on this one as I have searched high and low and cannot find the word aspect ratio or full or fit etc anywhere in Settings on the UHD3000. Any way on my post regarding a makemkv rip I beginning to think it is a disc authoring problem and I may have to use IFOEDIT to edit a couple of the ifofiles and then rip again from a hdd copy with edited IFO file ?
