2010-01-31, 15:24
most televisions overscan and don't do a 1:1 pixel map like a monitor would, so you end up with bits going off the edges of the screen. in linux, it is possible to configure your xorg.conf using custom modelines to get X11 to only display stuff within a certain boundary but its complicated. i did it a couple of years ago for my 720p HDTV but have since upgraded ubuntu and to be honest, i couldnt be bothered to go through the nightmare again once i realised my xorg.conf backup wasn't going to play nice. it took me days of messing.
i suggest installing the lightest window manager you can find that will allow you to create margins where a maximised window will not pass. openbox does this, and is far lighter than gnome and xfce, but there are others which may do it that are even lighter still, like wmii or awesome.
this is the default rc.xml settings file for openbox, with comments. if you ctrl+f and search for 'margins', you'll see that you can set pixel margins for top, bottom, left, right. when an app is maximised, these areas will be reserved and left untouched. should be fairly easy to match this to your televisions overscanning habits. if in xbmc you use -2%, just figure out what that is in pixels and start from there in your rc.xml.
once you've got openbox installed, if all you want to launch is firefox i guess the best thing to do would be to edit the openbox autostart.sh file and add firefox in there, then you can just launch openbox from xbmc. if you want to launch openbox and then firefox it may just be as simple as 'openbox-session & firefox' but i dont know.
another method to consider would be to write a shell script that does this:
that way, you just need to exit firefox and openbox will shut down.
the commands are all untested, by the way. except for the margin stuff.
i suggest installing the lightest window manager you can find that will allow you to create margins where a maximised window will not pass. openbox does this, and is far lighter than gnome and xfce, but there are others which may do it that are even lighter still, like wmii or awesome.
this is the default rc.xml settings file for openbox, with comments. if you ctrl+f and search for 'margins', you'll see that you can set pixel margins for top, bottom, left, right. when an app is maximised, these areas will be reserved and left untouched. should be fairly easy to match this to your televisions overscanning habits. if in xbmc you use -2%, just figure out what that is in pixels and start from there in your rc.xml.
once you've got openbox installed, if all you want to launch is firefox i guess the best thing to do would be to edit the openbox autostart.sh file and add firefox in there, then you can just launch openbox from xbmc. if you want to launch openbox and then firefox it may just be as simple as 'openbox-session & firefox' but i dont know.
another method to consider would be to write a shell script that does this:
Code:
openbox-session &
firefox;
killall openbox-session;
that way, you just need to exit firefox and openbox will shut down.
the commands are all untested, by the way. except for the margin stuff.