[mythtv-users] Have remote VNC screen at higher resolution?

Brad DerManouelian myth at dermanouelian.com
Wed Nov 12 22:44:33 UTC 2008


On Nov 12, 2008, at 2:38 PM, jarpublic at gmail.com wrote:

> I have an SD FE/BE. I keep the default screen resolution at 640x480  
> (ie the resolution of the TV). However when I connect via VNC to do  
> various management tasks the low resolution makes many dialog boxes  
> difficult and occasionally impossible to work with. I know one  
> option is to increase the resolution on the BE. However, it is my  
> understanding that the best picture will result if the resolution is  
> set at the resolution of the TV. Also I occasionally do small task  
> like updates, etc locally with TV as my monitor. If the resolution  
> is higher than 640x480 it is very difficult to read anything on the  
> TV. A while back on another machine I had setup NX server and had it  
> create a separate session when I logged in that ran at the  
> resolution that I wanted. I don't need the performance improvements  
> that NX provides and I don't really want to deal with maintaining it  
> and its security settings etc just for my local network.
>
> Is there a good way to make my remote VNC screen run at a higher  
> resolution? I have tried looking around the VNC documentation but  
> there are several different VNC servers and so many different  
> settings that it is difficult to track down the best way to  
> accomplish this (I suspect there several ways). Or is there some  
> other way you guys use for remote connections that gives you a  
> higher resolution screen rather than the low resolution used for the  
> TV?

Instead of using VNC, use X-Forwarding.

ssh -Y user at mythbox.ip.address.here

Once you're logged in, you can do something like this:

$ mythfrontend -O ThemePainter QT

That will run a new mythfrontend process using the QT painters instead  
of OpenGL and the GUI will appear on the machine from which you logged  
in, not the host machine. There is another command-line option for  
changing the resolution, but for some reason I can't find it right  
now. I'm sure someone else will chime in with that info. Something  
like -geometry 800x600?

-Brad



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