16/9 Movie On A 16/10 Monitor

After crashing the Xserver countless times I am now the proud viewer of Suse 10.1 in widescreen using a Samsung 226BW monitor. My next goal was to be able to crop a little off the sides of a fullscreen 16/9 movie so that it fills the 16/10 screen, and do this from the comfort of the sofa using LIRC and a remote control.

In vlc thats easy since there is an option on the crop menu for 16/10

I have solved it in a round about way with Kaffeine by using the XinepartIface zoomIn and zoomOut dcop commands whereby I can place the commands in the .lircrc file eg:-

begin
prog = irexec
button = Preview
Remote= Twinhan
config = dcop kaffeine XinePartIface zoomIn
config = dcop kaffeine XinePartIface zoomIn
config = dcop kaffeine XinePartIface zoomIn
config = dcop kaffeine XinePartIface zoomOut
config = dcop kaffeine XinePartIface zoomOut
config = dcop kaffeine XinePartIface zoomOut
end


By pressing the button a few times kaffeine will step through default zoom settings and back again. About 115% seems to look ok.

I have also done similiar with brightness and contrast in the ranges of 32-46% which works for my setup.

What I can't figure out is how to do the same zoom in/out with Xine-ui. I have searched quite a few .lircrc files and documentation for xine but can't find how to zoom in a bit by remote. In the video settings > chain reaction there is a pp filter to fill or expand but the aspect gets messed up.

Kaffeine and Xine-ui both use the xine engine so am I being stupid or just missing something here.

Any Ideas ?