I’m currently sending a 1080i signal to my new HDTV via VGA -> AA 9A60 -> Component. It looks pretty good, except for the overscan issue. My tv overscans about 5%, so I just accept the overscan for my desktop. Via the myth appearance settings, I adjust my mythfrontend so that it fits the screen perfectly. My X and Y sizes to make the frontend fit perfectly are about 1860 x 1020 or something like that. The menus and video playback look pretty good this way, however it doesn’t fix the desktop issue. If I go back to my desktop and open an xterm, the text is difficult to read because the pixels are being transposed. (like when you run an LCD monitor at a resolution other than native.) Same problem for the built in myth web browser.

My question is should is this what everyone else is doing? Would I better better off modifying my modeline to send the tv an 1840 x 1020 (or similar) modeline, so that the tv could possibly get closer to 1:1 pixel mapping? (I don’t even know if doing something like that would fall outside the guidelines of standard hdtv and confuse my tv.)

I’ve also noticed some slight convergence issues where I can see that white text has a little bit of green on one side and a little red on the other. Normally, I would think this is the tv’s fault, but my Cable box -> HDMI connection doesn’t do it, and neither does my DVD -> component connection. I wonder if the transposing of the pixel is the cause of this.

So is it better to send the full 1920x1080 and let the tv overscan it, or is it better to send the tv the exact resolution that it needs to perfectly fill the screen?

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Currently running: R5.5, HD5000 x 2, PVR150, Athlon 64 3000+, Chaintech VNF4, 1GB RAM, 2 x 250GB in LVM, MSI NX6200TC -> AA 9A60 -> HDTV

Near as I can tell, modifying the Modeline to give you the smaller screen space doesnt seem to change anything except what's considered usable screen real-estate for X since you only change the 1920 and 1080 numbers. This is what I do, and it saves having to change all the mythtv and mplayer settings to match.

FWIW, I've seen descriptions of services performed during ISF calibrations, and correcting overscan to match the signal, is one that looked attractive to me.

The white text with red/green/blue edges is a convergence/focus issue. Wait for the TV to warm up for 1/2 hr, and use the "flash focus" or "auto focus" if it has it. Maybe only CRT RPTV has these? Helps with mine. I've got "fine-tune" focus too, where I can manually adjust about 64 little white crosses, but that's a lot of work, and there's no way to save/recall the settings. So if I move the set and want to flash focus again, it wipes the fine-adjustment settings. Bummer. So I've learned to be pretty happy with the flash focus.

The convergence issues are probably due to a non-optimized modeline. It's showing you that the scan has different timing than the scan from your cable receiver.

Overscan is a fact of life on HD sets. On my Pioneer PRO-610HD set the overscan was something more like 15%! It was horrible. I paid an ISF tech to fix it, but it cost a lot (too much, really). I thought the pixel based sets like DLP and LCD would be free of overscan, but nope. They overscan too, and by nearly as much on some models!

If I ever replace my set, I'm going to write in the sales contract that the set will not be accepted as "delivered" until the overscan is dialed back to an acceptable level.

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