no way to "underscan" video

[kent_dorfman766]

Here's an interesting one. Please read in entirety before responding, to facilitate only applicable comments.

I have an old 1366 16:9 westinghouse TV driven via hdmi by a legacy GT610 nvidia card (using nvidia drivers, not nouveau)
The monitor has no way to correct for overscanning. D'Oh! I looked at xrandr underscan options but none of them work. I then did notice the nvidia-settings allows for underscanning, but it accomplishes the task by creating a viewport that is smaller than the total X11 dimensions...and this is NOT wayland, so those comments would not be relevant.

Anyway, setting the underscan region does seem to restrict the desktop dimensions and a band can be seen around the edges...However!...

There is always a "however".

The mouse still has full screen range, including off-screen overscanned areas...AND...any app that is put in fullscreen mode (without any desktop decorations) ignored the undercan, and occupies the off-screen area as well. I tried mplayer and mvp with all available video driver options and they all behave the same: overscanning when it is not wanted.

Here's the monitor and screen sections from xorg.conf

Code: Select all

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Westinghouse Digital Electronics WestinghouseSK-32H240S"
    HorizSync       15.0 - 70.0
    VertRefresh     49.0 - 76.0
EndSection

Section "Screen"

    #Monitor        "Monitor0"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "Stereo" "0"
    Option         "metamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0 {viewportout=1310x736+28+15}"
    Option         "SLI" "Off"
    Option         "MultiGPU" "Off"
    Option         "BaseMosaic" "off"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Obviously, manual scaling is not a desirable solution because it may be done innefficiently in software instead of by the GPU hardware.

Thoughts?

[CwF]

In Xfce there is a Workspaces>Margins setting that would maybe keep things within viewable area.

[kent_dorfman766]

In Xfce there is a Workspaces>Margins setting that would maybe keep things within viewable area.

Thanks for the followup. Unfortunately all the "desktop settings" only give hints to managed windows. For a full screen window it is up to the window whether it honors the desktop settings. It's the nature of desktop managers. They don't have the authority to override the client application in the X11 environment if the client app wants to misbehave.

I'm not understanding why the viewport setting in the nvidia proprietary driver setup xorg.conf is being ignored by mplayer and mpv though in fullscreen mode. My expectation was that the driver setup would PROHIBIT any client app from displaying outside of the viewport.