Mailing List Archive: Are there any 4k themes for mythfrontend?

Are there any 4k themes for mythfrontend?

Jan 1, 2024, 1:25 AM

Post #1 of 5 (282 views)

Since I have been using MythTV with my new LG C3 48" 4K TV for the
last couple of days, I have found an interesting problem. The
slightly modified version of the MythCenter-wide theme that I am using
works OK at 3840x2160, but wastes a lot of usable space due to having
huge text. At 1920x1080 on my old 32" 1080p TV, the text size was
good at my watching distance of 2.2 metres. But now it is quite a bit
larger than it needs to be, and if it could be made smaller a lot more
data could be fitted on to the screen, such as many more recordings on
the recordings list. But I have been unable to find any themes that
are designed for a 4K 3840x2160 screen size. Does anyone know of any?

It looks like it would be quite a difficult job to modify
MythCenter-wide to work well at 4K, as virtually all the numbers in
the theme files would need to be altered in the right proportions. How
do theme designers do this sort of thing - is it just by tediously
going through all the files and manually making the changes and
testing them?

I also found that I had to alter the XFCE4 desktop settings to make
the desktop and terminals readable at that distance. First I changed
the DPI setting to 200x200 in xorg.conf, so this is what I am using
now:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Nvidia GT1030"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "DPI" "200x200"
Option "NoLogo" "True"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "LG C3"
ModelName "LG Electronics LG TV SSCR2"
DisplaySize 1050 590
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "LG C3"
Device "Nvidia GT1030"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "BlankTime" "0"
Option "StandbyTime" "0"
Option "SuspendTime" "0"
Option "OffTime" "0"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

# For some reason X is unable to find the Nvidia drivers, so manual
paths
# are required.
Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/nvidia/xorg/"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
EndSection

Then I also had to go to XFCE menu > Settings > Appearance > Fonts >
DPI and set a "Custom DPI setting" value of 200.

And on startup I am running this command:

xset s on

which turns on the builtin X screensaver with its default timeout of
600 seconds. This screensaver will turn off the screen output if
there is no activity for that time, which will prevent OLED burn in
from having the mythfrontend menu screens displayed all the time.
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Re: Are there any 4k themes for mythfrontend? [ In reply to ]

jfabernathy at gmail

Jan 1, 2024, 4:35 AM

Post #2 of 5 (280 views)

Permalink

On Mon, Jan 1, 2024 at 4:29?AM Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent@jsw.gen.nz>
wrote:

> Since I have been using MythTV with my new LG C3 48" 4K TV for the
> last couple of days, I have found an interesting problem. The
> slightly modified version of the MythCenter-wide theme that I am using
> works OK at 3840x2160, but wastes a lot of usable space due to having
> huge text. At 1920x1080 on my old 32" 1080p TV, the text size was
> good at my watching distance of 2.2 metres. But now it is quite a bit
> larger than it needs to be, and if it could be made smaller a lot more
> data could be fitted on to the screen, such as many more recordings on
> the recordings list. But I have been unable to find any themes that
> are designed for a 4K 3840x2160 screen size. Does anyone know of any?
>
> It looks like it would be quite a difficult job to modify
> MythCenter-wide to work well at 4K, as virtually all the numbers in
> the theme files would need to be altered in the right proportions. How
> do theme designers do this sort of thing - is it just by tediously
> going through all the files and manually making the changes and
> testing them?
>
> I also found that I had to alter the XFCE4 desktop settings to make
> the desktop and terminals readable at that distance. First I changed
> the DPI setting to 200x200 in xorg.conf, so this is what I am using
> now:
>
> Section "Device"
> Identifier "Nvidia GT1030"
> Driver "nvidia"
> Option "DPI" "200x200"
> Option "NoLogo" "True"
> EndSection
>
> Section "Monitor"
> Identifier "LG C3"
> ModelName "LG Electronics LG TV SSCR2"
> DisplaySize 1050 590
> EndSection
>
> Section "Screen"
> Identifier "Default Screen"
> Monitor "LG C3"
> Device "Nvidia GT1030"
> EndSection
>
> Section "ServerFlags"
> Option "BlankTime" "0"
> Option "StandbyTime" "0"
> Option "SuspendTime" "0"
> Option "OffTime" "0"
> EndSection
>
> Section "Extensions"
> Option "Composite" "Disable"
> EndSection
>
> # For some reason X is unable to find the Nvidia drivers, so manual
> paths
> # are required.
> Section "Files"
> ModulePath "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/nvidia/xorg/"
> ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
> EndSection
>
> Then I also had to go to XFCE menu > Settings > Appearance > Fonts >
> DPI and set a "Custom DPI setting" value of 200.
>
> And on startup I am running this command:
>
> xset s on
>
> which turns on the builtin X screensaver with its default timeout of
> 600 seconds. This screensaver will turn off the screen output if
> there is no activity for that time, which will prevent OLED burn in
> from having the mythfrontend menu screens displayed all the time.
> _______________________________________________
>
>
I use the Functionality 31.2 theme on most of my PCs that run
mythfrontend. In particular on my Den PC which displays on a 65" Sony UHD
4K TV, my face is 15ft from the screen. The Functionality theme has 4 hours
and 14 channels on one screen.

The distance makes the normal non mythfrontend text too small so I use a
3840x2160 screen resolution but with a 200% scale factor on the Display
setup of Cinnamon DE. I'm using LMDE 6 Faye at the moment and it's still
X11, but I don't modify Xorg.conf.

However, since I change distros on this PC as much as I change my
underwear, I might be running Endeavour OS by tomorrow and that is Plasma
KDE. I use the same resolution and scale factor, but since Plasma is now
Wayland I have to launch mythfrontend with:

mythfrontend --platform xcb

If I don't I get a 1/4 screen display for mythfrontend.

Jim A

Re: Are there any 4k themes for mythfrontend? [ In reply to ]

jppoet at gmail

Feb 2, 2024, 7:31 PM

Post #3 of 5 (231 views)

Permalink

On Mon, Jan 1, 2024 at 1:29?AM Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent@jsw.gen.nz>
wrote:

> Since I have been using MythTV with my new LG C3 48" 4K TV for the
> last couple of days, I have found an interesting problem. The
> slightly modified version of the MythCenter-wide theme that I am using
> works OK at 3840x2160, but wastes a lot of usable space due to having
> huge text. At 1920x1080 on my old 32" 1080p TV, the text size was
> good at my watching distance of 2.2 metres. But now it is quite a bit
> larger than it needs to be, and if it could be made smaller a lot more
> data could be fitted on to the screen, such as many more recordings on
> the recordings list. But I have been unable to find any themes that
> are designed for a 4K 3840x2160 screen size. Does anyone know of any?
>
> It looks like it would be quite a difficult job to modify
> MythCenter-wide to work well at 4K, as virtually all the numbers in
> the theme files would need to be altered in the right proportions. How
> do theme designers do this sort of thing - is it just by tediously
> going through all the files and manually making the changes and
> testing them?
>

At some point I may create a "Steppes-small" theme for large TVs. Until
then, one thing you can play with is "GUI Text Zoom Percentage" under Setup
-> Appearance -> Theme / Screen Settings. With the Steppes theme, 80 to 85
works pretty well on my big TV. A value of 100 represents the theme
designer's chosen font size. Note: you do have to completely restart
mythfrontend for that setting to take effect.

John

Re: Are there any 4k themes for mythfrontend? [ In reply to ]

stephen_agent at jsw

Feb 3, 2024, 3:43 AM

Post #4 of 5 (229 views)

Permalink

On Fri, 2 Feb 2024 19:31:59 -0800, you wrote:

>On Mon, Jan 1, 2024 at 1:29?AM Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent@jsw.gen.nz>
>wrote:
>
>> Since I have been using MythTV with my new LG C3 48" 4K TV for the
>> last couple of days, I have found an interesting problem. The
>> slightly modified version of the MythCenter-wide theme that I am using
>> works OK at 3840x2160, but wastes a lot of usable space due to having
>> huge text. At 1920x1080 on my old 32" 1080p TV, the text size was
>> good at my watching distance of 2.2 metres. But now it is quite a bit
>> larger than it needs to be, and if it could be made smaller a lot more
>> data could be fitted on to the screen, such as many more recordings on
>> the recordings list. But I have been unable to find any themes that
>> are designed for a 4K 3840x2160 screen size. Does anyone know of any?
>>
>> It looks like it would be quite a difficult job to modify
>> MythCenter-wide to work well at 4K, as virtually all the numbers in
>> the theme files would need to be altered in the right proportions. How
>> do theme designers do this sort of thing - is it just by tediously
>> going through all the files and manually making the changes and
>> testing them?
>>
>
>At some point I may create a "Steppes-small" theme for large TVs. Until
>then, one thing you can play with is "GUI Text Zoom Percentage" under Setup
>-> Appearance -> Theme / Screen Settings. With the Steppes theme, 80 to 85
>works pretty well on my big TV. A value of 100 represents the theme
>designer's chosen font size. Note: you do have to completely restart
>mythfrontend for that setting to take effect.
>
>John

That is a useful setting, but unfortunately my theme (MythCenter-wide)
does not make use of the smaller font size to fit more lines and/or
more text into the available space.
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Re: Are there any 4k themes for mythfrontend? [ In reply to ]

twitham at sbcglobal

Feb 3, 2024, 9:13 PM

Post #5 of 5 (218 views)

Permalink

On 2/3/24 05:43, Stephen Worthington wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Feb 2024 19:31:59 -0800, John wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jan 1, 2024 at 1:29?AM Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent@jsw.gen.nz>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Since I have been using MythTV with my new LG C3 48" 4K TV for the
>>> last couple of days, I have found an interesting problem. The
>>> slightly modified version of the MythCenter-wide theme that I am using
>>> works OK at 3840x2160, but wastes a lot of usable space due to having
>>> huge text. At 1920x1080 on my old 32" 1080p TV, the text size was
>>> good at my watching distance of 2.2 metres. But now it is quite a bit
>>> larger than it needs to be, and if it could be made smaller a lot more
>>> data could be fitted on to the screen, such as many more recordings on
>>> the recordings list. But I have been unable to find any themes that
>>> are designed for a 4K 3840x2160 screen size. Does anyone know of any?
Based on the screens I saw in the store today, I guess we should have
some 4K themes by now? I didn't bother to get a 4K screen since then
I'd have to get a new computer too and don't yet have time for all that.
>>> It looks like it would be quite a difficult job to modify
>>> MythCenter-wide to work well at 4K, as virtually all the numbers in
>>> the theme files would need to be altered in the right proportions. How
>>> do theme designers do this sort of thing - is it just by tediously
>>> going through all the files and manually making the changes and
>>> testing them?

I let perl do it. I scaled a couple 720 files to 1080 and left the
command in a comment at the top of stream-ui.xml in Mythbuntu as an example:

    <!-- This is default-wide scaled to 1920x1080 like this:

    perl -pe '/<(area|position)>/ && s/(\d+)/int($1*1.5)/eg' \
    default-wide/stream-ui.xml > stream-ui.xml

So to go from 1080 to 2160 simply replace the 1.5 multiplier with 2.If
there were any percentages, you have to revert those.

>>> At some point I may create a "Steppes-small" theme for large TVs. Until
>>> then, one thing you can play with is "GUI Text Zoom Percentage" under Setup
>>> -> Appearance -> Theme / Screen Settings. With the Steppes theme, 80 to 85
>>> works pretty well on my big TV. A value of 100 represents the theme
>>> designer's chosen font size. Note: you do have to completely restart
>>> mythfrontend for that setting to take effect.
>>>
>>> John
Using the perl trick above, we could downsize all fonts with
s/<pixelsize>(\d+)/int($1*0.7)/eg or similar.
> That is a useful setting, but unfortunately my theme (MythCenter-wide)
> does not make use of the smaller font size to fit more lines and/or
> more text into the available space.

To get more lines, we have to make them smaller. Lines are actually a
<buttonlist>. We would want to keep the same large <buttonarea> but
then in the <area>x,y,w,h of the button items we would adjust only the y
shorter.   Hmmm, might be worth writing a perl script to just do all
this for us!

BTW, in Mythbuntu I added scroll bars to all buttonlists, even
horizontal ones, because I like the visual indication of how much of the
list I am seeing and where I am located in it. Other themes might like
to do this too.

-Tim

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