Divx / Xvid Playback Squished with Black Bars on Top and Bottom on HDTV via LG LHT854 Home Theater

Hello all,

I recently purchased an LG LHT854 5.1 Home Theater with up to Divx 5 playback. I had been using a PC and then a Philips Home Theater prior to that.

My Problem:
When I try to playback Xvid videos via USB (TV shows primarily), the shows are squished vertically so that there are black bars at the top and bottom and the people look short and slightly fat, though the picture is clear and smooth and the sound is synced. These videos have played via my Laptop connected via HDMI and my old Philips system with no issues...I made sure to test an old video I had. This makes me believe the LG HTIB hardware is not recognizing the video properly as DIVX and not reading the video headers properly or something similar.

Is there something I can do to the video to make it more compatible with the player or recognized and read as a Divx 5.0(or lower) avi?

Any other ideas are appreciated.

Some Key Points:

* I can change aspect ratio on my LG system (4:3 or 16:9) as well as resolution (480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i). I cannot change display width in HDMI mode on my Vizio HDTV.

* Changing the FourCC with AVIC to DIVX or DX50 does nothing.

* Using MPEG4 Modifier to change the display AR to 16:9 does nothing

Hardware Details:
Playback device is LG LHT854 5.1 HTIB (plays up to Divx 5.0)
[connected to HDTV via HDMI]
HDTV is Vizio 37" HDTV VO37LHDTV10A

Video Info:

From MPEG4 Modifier...
Packed bitstream: Yes
QPel: No
GMC: No
Interlaced: No
Aspect ratio: Square pixels
Quant type: H.263
FourCC: XVID
User data: DivX503b1393p
XviD0050

I-VOPs: 910 (1.55%)
P-VOPs: 21170 (35.97%)
B-VOPs: 36781 (62.49%)
S-VOPs: 0 (0.00%)
N-VOPs: 0 (0.00%)

Max consecutive B-VOPs: 2
1 consec: 20.27%
2 consec: 79.73%

GSpot Info...
Dimensions 624 x 352
Codec XVID
SAR 1.773 (39:22)
PAR 1.000 (1:1)
DAR 1.773 (39:22)
Frames/s 23.976

 

Some more info:

I converted the Xvid AVI to Divx using Dr. Divx and Ojosoft Converter, neither of which worked to fix the squishy-ness.

I also tried unpacking the bitstream, which some other people recommended, but again, no success.

Is anyone out there using the LG LHT854 to watch Divx/Xvid?

Thanks

 

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