rearview camera

biomekanik · 06-08-2005, 11:06 PM

Thanks to some scorching heat this week, my rearview mirror fell off and since then, I've been enjoying my unobstructed view through my windshield. Now I was thinking of keeping it off and replacing it with a camera. I don't know if it is legal or not but I'll worry about that later.
There is apparently no concensus on a good rearview camera here, but it should be of the wideangle infrared variety and my question is, if I use a 4:3 monitor for viewing the picture will I see black bars on the top and bottom or will it fit the 4:3 and have a fisheye appearance?
The screen would be about 2-3 inches and most likely a hacked portable TV with an input.

markland556 · 06-09-2005, 01:11 AM

i know some of the widangle cameras arent widescreen but just a compacted square of video.

kirbycope · 06-09-2005, 01:38 AM

Well big trucks dont have em now do they? you just need two side mirrors.

Jahntassa · 06-09-2005, 08:18 AM

Wide-angle does not mean wide-screen. Wide-angle is the viewing angle, how much of the rear it will show you. You want a wide-angle because it will be able to show you a wider area of view.

Most often these cameras are NOT wide-screen. They will be 4:3.

sdashiki · 06-09-2005, 10:42 AM

Some kind of anamorphic lens and a software decoder might make it ok...

Wherein you have an anamorphic attachment to the camera, it takes in a weird squashed looking 4:3 video, and then you take the video signal and export it to a 16:9 monitor that can unsquash anamorphic.

Did you know that DVDs contain ONLY 4:3 video, EVEN the widescreen versions. The DVD standard calls for MPG2 files that are 16:9 to be squashed into the 4:3 frame size of the DVD standard and the standard contains an "unsquasher" that it uses when, in the authoring program, the video is tagged as 16:9....

biomekanik · 06-09-2005, 12:23 PM

I was hoping it wasn't a widescreen video, but with everyone using their monitors, I didn't read anyone mentioning how it didn't fill up their entire screeen. It works out better being 4:3 for me anyway since I don't know of anything with a 2 inch widescreen except maybe for a couple of cell phones. Some of portable TVs now come with a video in jack which will make it that much less complicated.