Can someone tell me how to add "overscan"? (3 Viewers)

[kiwijunglist]

The TV cropping/overscan simulation in MediaPortal is flawed IMO. Windows MCE does it properly.

The MediaPortal cropping settings affect the *input* not the *output*. It also does pixels rather than percentage which doesn't really make sense since you can have 1080 TV signals and 480 signals. It's obviously been created with the mindset of only cropping "garbage" but this is not technically correct.

In Windows MCE, if you choose "TV" for the display it does no cropping at all which is correct because TVs have overscan. If you choose "Monitor" it crops and zooms the output by ~3% which simulates the overscan of the average TV.

There is no way to do this in MediaPortal unless you use the "IFC" plugin but it does a weird zooming effect every time you change channel which is disconcerting. It also only does coarse integer percentage cropping for horizontal and vertical cropping which distorts the aspect ratio slightly.

overscan + cropping are totally different entity. overscan is handled by the video card / display properties configuration. The overscan correction is for the entire operating system, not just mediaportal. Ie windows and every application displayed on the tv needs overscan correction. it would be dum for mediaportal to change overscan, probably not possible, and also it would be duplicating something already handled by catalyst control centre / the nvidia equivalent.

 

[gyring_eddy]

The TV cropping/overscan simulation in MediaPortal is flawed IMO. Windows MCE does it properly.

The MediaPortal cropping settings affect the *input* not the *output*. It also does pixels rather than percentage which doesn't really make sense since you can have 1080 TV signals and 480 signals. It's obviously been created with the mindset of only cropping "garbage" but this is not technically correct.

In Windows MCE, if you choose "TV" for the display it does no cropping at all which is correct because TVs have overscan. If you choose "Monitor" it crops and zooms the output by ~3% which simulates the overscan of the average TV.

There is no way to do this in MediaPortal unless you use the "IFC" plugin but it does a weird zooming effect every time you change channel which is disconcerting. It also only does coarse integer percentage cropping for horizontal and vertical cropping which distorts the aspect ratio slightly.

overscan + cropping are totally different entity. overscan is handled by the video card / display properties configuration. The overscan correction is for the entire operating system, not just mediaportal. Ie windows and every application displayed on the tv needs overscan correction. it would be dum for mediaportal to change overscan, probably not possible, and also it would be duplicating something already handled by catalyst control centre / the nvidia equivalent.

I second redmist's point. This is something that has bugged me from the very beginning.

I have overscan correction applied in my nvidia control panel which ensures my windows desktop fits onto my TV with no cropping. MP's UI calibration setting allows me to ensure the same for the MP interface. All well and good. The problem then is that the TV picture has too little overscan - I'd prefer to loose about 3% off the edges, just as I would get if I didn't apply any overscan correction. Currently the only option I have is to use the crop feature to 'simulate' overscan, but as redmist points out, it works in pixels, therefore: a) it can't compensate for different aspect ratios resulting in distortion, and b) it crops a different proportion of the picture depending on whether it's SD or HD.

The best solution would be to redesign the crop feature to use a percentage, and ideally allow different settings for TV, Video and DVD (and even SD and HD). Or maybe add a 3% zoom option to the available aspect ratios.