[mythtv-users] LCD and traditional CRT TVs, overscan and UI size and widget placement

[David Watkins]

2009/11/11 Brian J. Murrell <brian at interlinx.bc.ca>:
> Hey everyone,
>
> I have a traditional CRT TV (am I the only one left with one of
> these?  :-).  I am driving that with an nvidia 5200 via S-Video.

No, there's me too, same setup though my CRT TV is wide screen.

>
> See this picture I took of my TV:
> http://svn.mythtv.org/trac/attachment/ticket/7545/P1010451.JPG

My picture looks much better than that.  I'm definately using overscan
(via nvidia_settings) though I can't remember if I made changes to the
UI window position.

> You can see a "wow" on the top half of the left border.  But this is
> just how CRT TVs are.  This is exactly why overscan exists.

My wavy edges are hidden by the overscan and I've never noticed
widgets overlapping the edge of the screen.  I'll have a look tonight.

> This same problem of the UI widgets being drawn outside the visible area
> exists though, and naturally I want to use the adjustment tool to bring
> them back inside the visible area.  But instead of leaving the UI window
> the same size as the screen (1280x720) and just moving the widgets in
> tighter, this adjustment actually makes the mythfrontend window smaller
> and them blam, gnome notices that the window is no longer the same
> dimension as the screen and puts the panels on top of the mythfrontend
> window again.

I experimented with higher resolution settings but found that I
preferred the picture with the resolution set to 800x600.

I'm not sure how higher resolutions get translated into S-Video.

I did try and set a 720x576 (PAL?) modeline which I thought should
match the S-Video signal best, but never got that working.