Mailing List Archive

Andrew Bruce wrote:
> Does anyone have a fully working modeline or similar way of getting an
> NVidia card (using the NVidia driver) to properly display onto the TV?

In short - no.

The reason this happens is that TVs have "overscan" which is about 2%.

If you've ever run a VGA signal into a composite adapter then to a TV you
notice that the sides are not vertical... instead they buldge in and out
depending on how much dark and bright is in that line. Even expensive
tube TVs do it. So the answer is overscan.

Try googling for "nvidia overscan" now you know the name ?


--
Criggie

http://criggie.dyndns.org/
http://www.avonside.school.nz/


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Please let the list know if you ever figure it out.
I've been battling nvidia overscan for a long time.
I've got it down to a 1cm black border around the screen now but I'd still
like to get the overscan right and completely eliminate the border.

There is heaps of stuff on google but it seems to behave eraticlly.

I've adjusted just about every setting in my /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 and all I
seem to be able to do is make it worse.

Regards
Toby Mills




-----Original Message-----
From: mythtvnz-admin@lists.linuxnut.co.nz
[mailto:mythtvnz-admin@lists.linuxnut.co.nz] On Behalf Of Criggie
Sent: Wednesday, 7 June 2006 1:20 p.m.
To: mythtvnz@lists.linuxnut.co.nz
Subject: Re: [mythtvnz] TV-Output - 720x576



Andrew Bruce wrote:
> Does anyone have a fully working modeline or similar way of getting an
> NVidia card (using the NVidia driver) to properly display onto the TV?

In short - no.

The reason this happens is that TVs have "overscan" which is about 2%.

If you've ever run a VGA signal into a composite adapter then to a TV you
notice that the sides are not vertical... instead they buldge in and out
depending on how much dark and bright is in that line. Even expensive tube
TVs do it. So the answer is overscan.

Try googling for "nvidia overscan" now you know the name ?


--
Criggie

http://criggie.dyndns.org/
http://www.avonside.school.nz/


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On Wed, 2006-06-07 at 13:40 +1200, Toby Mills wrote:

> I've been battling nvidia overscan for a long time.
> I've got it down to a 1cm black border around the screen now but I'd still
> like to get the overscan right and completely eliminate the border.
>
> There is heaps of stuff on google but it seems to behave eraticlly.

Yep, it behaves very randomly, across the same GPU on different boards
even.

Overscan is very poorly supported on GPUs prior to the GF4, it depends
entirely on what off-chip TV encoder you have. Some will work, some
won't.

For your GF2, I would suggest ignoring all the nvidia options, and
looking at nvtv. It may work better, or it may break everything. I had
the latter a lot on my GF3 Ti 200, but then the nvidia drivers magically
did the right thing with it's off-chip TV encoder eventually :)

On GPUs from GF4 onwards, the support is also quite variable, but gets
better the newer you get. My FX5200 does "okay", tho the TV-out quality
is not the best, but it overscans the way I want it to.

--
David Zanetti <david.zanetti@catalyst.net.nz>
Team Leader, Systems Administration
Catalyst IT Limited
+64-4-8032233 +64-21-402260

>I would suggest ignoring all the nvidia options, and looking at nvtv. It
may work better, or it may break everything.

Thanks David,
Yes nvtv is the only thing I haven't played with because it is too high a
risk on a production 'wife' system where failure to record desparate
housewives = death via repeated stabbing.

Trying to fix the little black border by fiddling with nvtv has too high a
risk of death asociated with it :)

I need a test environment, but as you say it isn't even consistent across
the same model of card so it probably wouldn't help.

I might do a complete system backup and then have a play with nvtv and hope
I don't break everything.

Cheers
Toby


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