Our main TV is a generic aging Sanyo 720p LCD number. It is by and large serviceable. In lieu of cable TV I mostly hook various boxes to it. I suspect it’s dataed from the earliest years of HDMI availability, with only a single HDMI port, but multiple component and composite connections.
One reoccurring issue I have though is that displays it’s image via Overscan and has no option for turning it off.
My Switch copes with this beautifully as does our dumb bluray player. But when hooking up a computer either Windows or any XOrg based OS; overscan starts cropping the UI.
There are lots of software tricks for lots of OSes and GPU drivers for fixing this, and I have employed them before. The thing is too software based solutions tend to be fragile. A single game or application resetting the resolution when it chooses to go full screen, or a driver/OS update can easily break it.
But what I really want is a hardware solution. Some HDMI box that resizes the display image slightly that will thus compensate for the overscan. Does any such thing exist?
Failing that is there a better option I am not thinking of?
Asside, neither I nor my fiance really care enough about display resolutions to care about upgrading, but im getting a little tired of this papercut.
They were very annoying, especially for something that should be just part of the normal software TV menu.
It did work for me though. I suspect it will work on any Sanyo TV from that era. Though the variables I needed to tweak had different index numbers slightly. They were easy to identify though as they had the samne names.
If this thing ever breaks beyond repair. Ill likely replace it with a monitor with built in speakers. OR a monitor and speakers. TVs with secret configuration menus are kinda dumb for my purposes; especially as we dont use any kind of cable/satellite/antennae tuning. And I have no love of Smart TVs.
Our TV is against the bedroom’s wall where kiddo is sleeping, so in the evening Susan and I sometimes use a bluetooth speaker, just sitting between us. Works surprisingly well! I’ve had the same thought on replacing the device, since now one must go out of their way to disable surveillance in TVs…
Their just such all around bad ideas. From surveillance, to security, to planned obsolescence and ewaste. To just usability.
I’ve witnessed friends have to wait for smart TVs to “boot up” far too long for my liking. Ive seen friend’s Smart TVs reject their HDCP handshake with their multimedia PCs leaving them to scratch their heads for weeks or months and ultimately abandoning the multimedia PC. Ive read about people wrestling with the apps they need not being compatible with their Smart TVs.
I prefer my dumb TV and my dumb Bluray player. And hooking up other things to them. Im going to get a lot more mileage out of them as appliances that way.
