[mythtv-users] understanding overscan feature in CVS

[Dave Caplinger]

I recently bought some new hardware for my Myth Box (Asus A7N266-VM,
Athlon XP 2000+ Tbred, etc.) and things are generally very good (after 
kernel recompiles to get the non-broken IDE code).  So I'm in the final
stretch playing with TV-out on my GForce 2 MX/400 card (NOT the built-in
video, but an AGP card with TV-out).  I'm using nvtv to put the video
out in "overscan" mode (and to adjust brightness etc), which looks
fantastic for playing recoded shows or watching live TV, but when I do
this, the Myth menu screens are "too big" to fit within the TV screen
borders.

I know there are overscan options in MythTV in CVS (which is what I'm
running), but it doesn't look like I can fix this with those options. 
>From what I see, the overscan affects video playback only, not the menu
displays, and even then it can never actually "overscan" anything in the
sense that it can never make your X display size appear bigger than it
is.  If turn overscan off in nvtv so the entire X display is within the
TV screen borders, the video image can never be bigger than that, as per
FAQ 18.5.  So as far as I can tell, the MythTV overscan function is
really a "scale-and-crop" function.

It seems like what I really need is an option to "underscan" (or just
reduce the size and center) the various Myth menu displays.  This seems
a lot more do-able by just drawing the QT displays within a slightly
bigger black box.  So before I try to dig into the code to figure out
how to do this, let me do a quick reality check: how are the rest of you
that have your Myth boxen running with TV output handling overscan of
your video so it fills the TV screen?  Is there another way that I'm
missing?

-- 
Dave Caplinger <dent at cox.net>