Really old hardware & overscan

  • I've installed LibreELEC on my Pi4 and have been slowly getting it configured to be useful. One thing that is causing me a lot of problems is that my TV is around 20 years old. It's a very nice flatscreen HDTV but it doesn't show all 1920x1080 pixels. It has the old analogue TV overscan that I can't seem to remove (that convinced me to switch to LibreELEC from RaspberryPi OS running Kodi).

    For watching TV, this isn't a problem but for a computer is it a huge issue because the menu/launchers are usually around the edge of the screen, in the overscan area.

    I've been trying out various skins to get around this but haven't found any that I really like. The trouble is that it takes time to download and install them only to find that you can't see the menus and (worse) can't find a way to change the skin.

    Can anyone recommend a skin that:
    1) give access to all the options
    2) stays away from the 4 edges of the screen?

    Thanks

  • Kodi also supports screen "calibration" where you can move the screen borders. It's not ideal for best reproduction, but if that's the only option, it's the only option. Calibration is applied to individual resolution/refresh combinations, so perhaps only calibrate 1080p@60 so the desktop looks right and leave everything else. Video playback will overscan as e.g. [email protected] isn't calibrated, but then Kodi isn't having to manipulate (squash) the image in software, which is a good thing.