[mythtv-users] GUI Screen size too big.

[Jeff Monks]

On Tue, 3 Feb 2004, Jim Hribnak wrote:

> I played around with the sizes in Appearances but some areas the buttons
> still are either half visible or not visible at all. even tweaked X and Y  I
> get it sort of usable but is it necessary to have to tweak these settings
> for your tv?

This is pretty normal.  TVs use what's called "overscan" dimensions to 
make sure that the picture reaches the edges of the screen.  This means 
that the picture is actually a little larger than the screen size.  The 
size and X and Y parameters you mentioned are there for exactly this 
reason.  Depending on your video-out hardware, there may be utilities (the 
nvtv program for NVidia cards, for example) to help tweak this, as well.

I had to do a lot of tweaking on my frontend to get it so that the 
GUI was totally visible (and at 640x480 some of the settings screens 
simply don't fit no matter what), without ending up with a black border at 
the edges while playing video.  Just tweak and test until it looks good to 
you.  I ended up leaving the setting screens a little oversize to get the 
video playback right, figuring that the time I spend in setup screens is 
much less than the time I spend watching TV.