I've installed the latest Knoppmyth and spent hours yesterday in configuration. I loaded all the proper drivers for my Matrox G400. When MythTV starts the GUI is larger than my desktop (the bottom buttons are off the screen).

Now, here's where I'm confused. I want to run 800x600 for my desktop and GUI. Currently, I can go into Appearance settings and manually set 800x600 for the GUI. It then appears in a box small enough that I can see the desktop picture behind it.

If I set the GUI to 1024x768, it's still a bit smaller than the desktop.

I read about an 'overscan' percentage setting. Where is it located?

Also, where can/would I set my desktop size? Can I also disable the virtual screen?

were you ever able to find an answer to this problem?

schmeckendeugler:
Check out http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10049

Not the initial posts, but the latter ones in the thread discuss overscan.

Yeah, I saw those already... but I'm not sure it'll help me.

I started a new tread for my particular problem, and if I knew what "OVerscan" was then maybe... just maybe, iit'll help me.

Overscan is the part of the picture that's off the screen. All (at least SDTV) TV's do this. It's an analog engineering hack to hide any ragged edges. Kind of like cropping a photo.

Computer monitors (and thus video cards) don't do this since you want to see all the pixels so that parts of your text, menus, GUI controls aren't hidden. When you play back captured TV on a monitor or send output from a video card to a TV, you'll see the ragged edges and a picture that doesn't fill the screen unless you do amke some kind of overscan adjustment.

Well, I still want to try and do something... Call it a personal quest. Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way; or maybe later I'll discover that it's actually not necessary, but now I've taken up this challenge and I am dead-set on solving it!

I spent some time reading about X windows on xorg.freedesktop.org and I learned of this one option called



Well, I took a Measuring Stick and measured my TV, and estimated it was about 400mm x 300mm. So, I made my /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 look like this:



...Which broke my MythTV.

Maybe the Measuring stick is not NTSC compatible.

The Quest continues......

I believe DisplaySize belongs in the Monitor section of your config

Didn't work.

pretty sure this is currently unsolvable in current X windows installation with this pvr-350.

Any luck on this?
I'm at what I believe is the exact same situation. I've hooked up my nvidia 6800 card to a 32" Sharp Aquos (LC-32D40U) via a DVI to HDMI cable but I can't seem to find how to remedy the overscan portion. I can barely see the task bar

I've tried xvidtune and the nvidia-settings but xvidtune won't allow me to make any changes and nvidia-settings doesn't have any resolutions that seem to work. I did manage to get the fonts fixed. That was my big breakthrough for today's grind ( *ding* newb has hit level 1! =P )

I have an XP machine attached to the screen's other HDMI input and was successful getting it to fit using Powerstrip. I even used the "ModLine" parameters it spat out in the XF86Config-4 file but that didn't work either. I actually caused me to forcibly reinstalling the nvidia drivers.

I'm trying again since I know I probably botched something up along the way. Any news on how you were able to tackle it would really help me get my bearings.

No, sorry to say, that I pretty much hit the same brick wall you did.

I googled it more, and it seems like it might actually be a known bug in X11. I actually considered talking to the dev team, joining their e-mail list, but I figured there were other, easier-to-fix tasks before me as per Knoppmyth.

I'm surprised, though, that you have an Nvidia, and it still doesn't work! Good to know, since one next thing I was going to try was this older card I have with an old nvidia chipset and a TV-Out on it! I was all set to re-install, and try the xvidtune. But if it didn't work for you, then... probably wouldn't work for me either.

What was wrong with your fonts?

and as far as hitting level 1, lemme give you my old everquest emote: ()xxx[]========> Congratulations! <========[]xxx()

On my remote frontend, if I specify a modeline (using the 8776 Nvidia drivers) in my XF86Config-4, I end up with a large portion of the GUI off my screen. The GUI is zoomed in you might say. If I don't specify a specific modeline resolution and use the option "nvidia-auto-select" in my "Screen" section, all is well with the GUI.

_________________
Mike
My Hardware Profile

thanks for your replies. It actually comes as good news. I wiped the machine again moments after I posted that last message and went back to MythTV .19 instead of .2. I got everything working just fine with the glaring exception of the overscan issue. The funny part of this is that I've noticed that this recent install's overscan issues within MythTV are alot less severe than when I was running .20. I still get the same overscan problem in X though it's not as bad while in MythTV. *shrugs*

Your info lets me know that I just need to be satisfied with .19. It seems to work just fine with the exception of the overscan problem. At least now I can move on to other things such as getting the MAME stuff to work.
I'm just hoping that the overscan issues won't effect that part of MythTV so bad.

thanks for the info. It's been a great help.

I just found this on the mythtv-users mailing list posted today. Apparently this guy, Mark L. Chang, beat the overscan issues.

*************
Just wanted to report out since this list has helped me so much.

Short story:
Myth + HDTV + Remote + LCD == Happiness.

Long story:
System: Dell E521, Athlon64 3200+, 512MB, 80G
Tuner: HDHomeRun
Video: XFX 6200TC w/128MB
OS: Ubuntu Edgy

* Installed Ubuntu Server AMD 64 w/LCD monitor
* installed binary nvidia xorg drivers
* installed mythtv as per the Ubuntu wiki
* brought up the HDHomeRun as per their forum posts (after a firmware update)
* no xvmc, simple deinterlacing with kernel (not bob)
* put in the xmltvids into all channels I get OTA
* hooked up DVI to Sharp Aquos TV
* simply used a 1280x768 setting and turned on dot/dot and voila,
we're running great
* hdhomerun's IR receiver over UDP to myth with a Tivo series 2 remote
works great

recorded some programs tonight and watched a dvd.

so awesome. i am in awe.

*************

Note: where he says "dot/dot" he means "No Overscan". His setup is similiar to mine especially with the Sharp Aquos TV.

I'm going to see if I can glean something from this.

Armblessed: You and I are cursed with the Aquos. It has built in overscan that you cannot defeat. Notice how he said "simply used a 1280x768 setting and turned on dot/dot and voila,we're running great ". Well, voila, none of the Sharp sets will do dot/dot.

The reason being that the ATSC 720p-60 standard is natively 1280x720. Add about 5 to 8 percent all the way around and you get...*drumroll*...1366x768, which is the native resolution of our televisions. So, there's your overscan, hiding all the messy details of analog and digital stations, but also hiding your interface buttons.

The only way I've even gotten comfortable with my Aquos is to run it at 1280x720. Things *mostly* fit this way, and you don't see any raggedy edges. Text is decently readable (not like dot/dot would be though) and the image quality is excellent.

All you should do to begin with is look in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 and find the section where the HD modelines are defined. You should see "ATSC-720p-60" listed there. Make that your default resolution and your default bpp should always be 24. Restart gdm (/etc/init.d/gdm restart) and see what happens.

If you *really* want to get serious, after you make that change and X looks better, go through the appearance options and tick the option for running the mythtv gui in a window. Now specify the window X and Y sizes. You can get it to the point where myth fits perfectly on the 95% of your screen you can actually see but at the sacrifice of small text legibility.

Trust me dude, I've been battling with my Aquos LC-32DA5u since the day I bought it. I've tried 50 different modelines, 20 different Nvidia options, hidden service menus, etc. and nothing has worked like what I described above. With these sets you just have to accept something less than perfect since overscan is permanently built-in.

If you go the route afrosheen suggests (changing Myth's appearance settings), you'll probably also want to add something like the following to /home/mythtv/.mplayer/config so that your videos also fit on screen:

The -32 decreases the height of videos played by MPlayer by 32 pixels and the 10 moves the video down 10 pixels. You'll probably have to play with these values to get them just right for your display. The 95 specifies where subtitles should be positioned, and is a percentage of the screen height.

I couldn't watch some of my foreign language videos before I did this because the subtitles were partially offscreen.