Aspecta Cinema Player

[kunaln1991 2]

Hi everyone,

 

I wanted to share something I’ve been working on that may be useful for some Emby users with projector, scope screen, or Constant Image Height setups.

 

It’s called Aspecta Cinema Player, and it’s an Android TV / Google TV external player designed to automatically detect black bars and resize video to suit your selected screen format.

 

The main idea is simple: if you use a projector or scope screen and are tired of manually changing zoom modes, Aspecta can help keep the presentation consistent by automatically adapting to the movie’s aspect ratio.

 

It supports common active display area presets, including:

 

16:9

1.85:1

1.90:1

2.00:1

2.20:1

2.35:1

2.39:1

2.40:1

 

This is especially useful for people using wider screens, where normal 16:9 playback can leave you constantly adjusting projector zoom, lens memory, or display modes.

 

Some key features:

 

- Automatic black-bar / aspect-ratio detection

- Constant Image Height style resizing

- Handles variable aspect ratio content

- Designed for Android TV / Google TV devices

- Works well for projector and scope screen setups

- Dolby Vision / HDR playback support where supported by the device

- HD audio passthrough support depending on the device and playback chain

- Subtitle positioning designed to stay within the active display area

- Anamorphic lens support for 2.39:1 and 2.40:1 setups

 

I originally built this for my own home cinema setup because I wanted a simpler and more affordable way to get smart aspect-ratio handling without needing an expensive external video processor.

 

For Emby users, the goal is for Aspecta to be used as an Android TV external player where that workflow suits your setup. You keep using Emby as your media library/server, then hand playback over to Aspecta when you want automatic CIH / scope screen handling.

 

I’d be very interested to hear from other Emby users, especially anyone using:

 

- NVIDIA Shield TV / Shield Pro

- Android TV projectors

- Google TV boxes

- Scope screens

- Anamorphic lenses

- 21:9 / vertical squeeze projector modes

- Dolby Vision or HDR media libraries

 

I’m still improving device compatibility and real-world testing, so feedback from serious Emby users would be really valuable.

 

The app is available on Google Play as Aspecta Cinema Player.

 

Thanks everyone.  Happy to answer questions or hear how people are currently handling CIH / scope screen playback with Emby.

[visproduction 351]

Hopefully, there is a setting to keep the correct Aspect Ratio.  I personally cannot stand to watch aspect ratio even slightly off.  I can easily see even 2.39 and 2.35 averages to 2.37 or 1.85 stretched to 1.78.  I have to leave the room if either of these show up.

There are also advanced screen hardware with top and bottom panels that can move up to fill in black bar areas.  That is a nice fix, but rather expensive.

[kunaln1991 2]

5 hours ago, visproduction said:

Hopefully, there is a setting to keep the correct Aspect Ratio.  I personally cannot stand to watch aspect ratio even slightly off.  I can easily see even 2.39 and 2.35 averages to 2.37 or 1.85 stretched to 1.78.  I have to leave the room if either of these show up.

There are also advanced screen hardware with top and bottom panels that can move up to fill in black bar areas.  That is a nice fix, but rather expensive.

Correct. Aspecta caters to all of the widely used aspect ratios. It doesn't stretch or distort any images. Keeping OAR is the priority while scaling to your screens aspect ratio. 

[visproduction 351]

Some films are shot with mixed AR because the director wanted the change to happen for an audience to experience different scenes.  Here are some listed:
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls072030807/

So ideally in these cases, a preferred aspect ratio should be choosen and top and bottom and / or left and right black bars would then appear, as needed.

[Apotropaic 69]

Interesting project, this seems to be like a mini version of MadVR concentrating on the aspect ratio scaling, very clever!!

Unfortunately even though I have a projector my 120 inch screen is in 16:9. But I’ll take a look later.

[kunaln1991 2]

hey @visproduction

Basically you would select your screens aspect ratio In the app. This is a set and forget menu.

You would then set emby to use an external player and open with Aspecta Cinema Player. 

The content would then adapt to your screen. 

See example from The Dark Knight Rises switching between 2.39:1 and 16:9. (i understand this is not the directors intent in this example but just wanted to show how seamless the Aspect Ratio detection and switching is)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PnnvxG16CAkqxpgLyHHKTiYkW3VGFBqn/view?usp=sharing

 

 

 

[visproduction 351]

Downloading the videos works, thanks.  My Windows 10 notebook with latest Chrome didn't like playing it in the browser.
Aspecta is really nice.  Good work.  I had a setup with surround and 65" Panasonic with blu-ray that had RCA audio out, running to separate amps and full size two and 3 way speakers.  It was nice, but most of it is in storage now for the last 2 1/2 years.  Moving to a new place, without a job and trying to find a large enough living room, is challenging.