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HDTV crops desktop


Marco G
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Hello everyone

 

Well, I'm once again trying to get linux to do something for me and once again it just seems to disagree with me...

 

So this is the Problem:

I'm installing a little NAS/MediaCentre PC upon an Asus P5Q-EM Board. This board 'features' an Intel graphics chip and has an HDMI connector.

 

So I installed Mandriva 2009.0 on a USB attached flash drive and everything worked quite well with my 15 inch TFT. Then I attached the little box to my plasma tv and whatever I do I cannot get a FullHD picture. Either the image is so small with wide black borders around it or the tv overscans and crops the desktop on all sides making working impossible and the image look very fuzzy.

 

Now I realize that the overscaning is not Xorg's fault, but is there a way to configure it so it will counter this problem?

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Firstof all make sure you have set X to the native resolution of your TV, or to one of the standard HDTV resolutions: 1280x720 or 1920x1080.

 

Then try to find out (search for your TV model and the word 'overscan' on google) if there is a way to set the overscan on the TV to zero (sometimes there is a service menue or it's in the advanced options), that would be the ideal solution, otherwise you could make a personalized xorg.conf modeline, but that won't give you a pixel perfect display either (as the TV still does the rescaling) and is quite hard to get right anyway.

 

You could try to post this on the Linux section of the AVS forum too, there are quite a few people with lots of Linux HTPC experience:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=76

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Thanks for the pointers.

 

There seems to be a service menu on that TV but you lose warranty by tweaking things in there... doesn't mean I won't do it, of course ;). I've booted the machine with the TV on the D-Sub connector and it even said Panasonic TV in the configuration app. Then I set it to FullHD resolution... now whether it actually uses that resolution I don't know, but I'm hoping linux wouldn't try to fool me like this.

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I don't know where you live, but if you live anywhere in the EU tweaking things in the service menu doesn't void the warranty, even opening the case doesn't unless the manufacturer can prove that what you did caused the defect.

Have a look at the Xorg log file to see what resolution gets used, type the following on a console:

 

more /var/log/Xorg.0.log

 

The logfile is quite long but full of interesting info, if you are trying to debug a X issue.

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