Resolution resolution

[CiXel]

This may be off topic for this forum, but I'm always amazed at the wealth of knowledge abound here.

My Sony TV has a "widescreen" mode that it will flip to when an anamorphic widescreen dvd is played. If I play a normal 4:3 dvd the TV stays normal (Widescreen mode for those that care or don't know compresses the beam of the CRT giving you a much higher resolution than you would be able to achieve otherwise)

So here's my question.
I currently use S-video from my DVD player, if I instead run XLobby and use the S-Video out on a video card how would I get my TV to flip modes? Would it do it autmatically like with a DVD? Would that be a job for something like powerstrip? Does anyone has any experience on this front?

[rembetis]

Powerstrip could probably be used to swap resolutions between desktop/Xlobby and movie playback, but it will probably be a bitch to configure. Best bet is probably to use a player frontend like Zoomplayer that has automatic ratio detection and adjustment. Don't think you'll get the special resolution that way (never heard of that by the way), but 720x480 is the highest s-vid will carryanyway. Alternately, I suppose you might be able to send the tv a widescreen resolution all the time, but I think you'd get a squashed desktop that way.

[Marbles_00]

I agree with rembetis. The DVD/High Def consortium (sp?) has limited all analog signals (this includes s-video) to a max resolution of 720x480. It doesn't matter if you used powerstrip, as your max resolution from those outputs will always be 720x480. To be able to use powerstrip to its max and take advantage of the higher resolutions requires a video card with the capabilities (ATI 9600 and above, or Nvidia 6600 and above supposedly work nicely), and component or DVI output. There's an excellent post on the HTPCnews.com website that discusss the issue (do you think I could find it again and link it here...not). If I recall, it discussed that the best way of achieving high resolution, widescreen is by DVI/HDMI because there is less legislation against those pure digital signal connection types.

Hope this was helpful.

*EDIT* Lo and behold, I found the forum article:
http://htpcnews.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14202

And the company that is in the lead of limiting the the DVD output is Macrovision....damn them.