[doveman2]

I imagine most people are using HDMI but as my brother needs to use the composite output I'd like to set the overscan for him so the OE boot text is completely visible.

Can anyone suggest ballpark settings for 16:9 PAL (as he'll be using it for LiveTV it needs to be in PAL/50hz mode and he'll just have to put up with any anomalies playing NTSC/60hz material)?

I know I could just experiment but with the settings in the config.txt it's rather long-winded doing that, so if someone has some idea what to use that would be great. I'm testing with the SCART input on my plasma TV, which obviously doesn't have any inherent overscan, whilst his CRT TV will and it might not be very well adjusted, so even if I get it looking good here by experimenting it might not be great for his TV and it will be better if someone who has some idea what will work for a CRT can advise.

It seems that overscan_scale=1 will make the settings apply to OpenElec, video playback, etc, which seems cool as it will mean he won't need to readjust the video overscan in OE if the settings get corrupted (he had a weird corruption when he had to pull the power after it locked up the other day and it lost all his settings, the AppTV skin he was using disappeared as an option and all the PVR addons re-enabled themselves but he's not on a recent build).

[noggin]

Overscan is a function of individual TV models, there isn't a 'standard' setting. It depends how the factory that made your TV set it up. I've seen it vary hugely from TV to TV. (When I had a CRT I manually adjusted my TV in the engineering menus to reduce the amount of overscan to the minimum I could achieve without seeing black bars on the edges of frame)

UK broadcasters expect it to be less than 5% from the top and bottom of frame (they keep graphics within this area), so that's not a bad starting point. If you see black bars on the edges, then reduce the amount of overscan until you can't quite see them? (In fact the setting is more accurately described as "overscan compensation" as it is compensating for the overscan applied by the TV)

[doveman2]

Thanks noggin, I did think it might be difficult to adjust it without having the set it's destined for in front of me.

Currently I've got:

overscan_left=20
overscan_right=12
overscan_top=10
overscan_bottom=10

and at least with my TV that does keep all the boot text on screen, so I'll tweak it from there for my brother's TV.

If the text spills over on his TV, would I want to increase or decrease those numbers?

[popcornmix]

If text spills over, then increase the numbers. If there is too much black border, then decrease.

[doveman2]

If text spills over, then increase the numbers. If there is too much black border, then decrease.

Makes sense, thanks

[Espionage724]

I use 32 for all overscan values on my CRT TV. Seems to work fine.

Should overscan values be the same for all values? Won't you end up with messed up pixel scaling (aka that square thing Kodi shows when using it's overscan; won't it not be a square then)?

[noggin]

I use 32 for all overscan values on my CRT TV. Seems to work fine.

Should overscan values be the same for all values? Won't you end up with messed up pixel scaling (aka that square thing Kodi shows when using it's overscan; won't it not be a square then)?

Entirely depends on how well your CRT TV is aligned...