(SOLVED) HDMI overscan after installing nvidia

[flashyman]

So I just installed Kubuntu, and so far I'm liking it.
However, after the installation the resolution was good at 1920x1080 and I had no overscan issues.
Now eversince I installed the nvidia driver and rebooted, i'm having a huge overscan issue. The only way to get the screen to fit again is to use the resize function that is now available in the nvidia settings, but it gives a very blurry effect and looks very bad. Another problem with that is that it won't save that option, no option is saved actually cause i get an error when i try to save settings and so i have to set it up after every reboot.
I remember i had issues with overscan in windows, and had to make a custom .dat file for this monitor to make it work. But there must be other possible solutions for this in linux too.

I'm really stuck here, oh and I don't have an option on my monitor for scan-only so before anyone would suggest that

If anyone knows one or more possible solutions or have any ideas please be so kind to post them, thanks in advance.

[Teunis]

Re: HDMI overscan after installing nvidia

Have you checked if the Display and Monitor settings in System Settings can be of help?

[flashyman]

Re: HDMI overscan after installing nvidia

Yes, I've tried many different things, including customizing the xorg.conf file with no results so far.
I'm pretty much new when it comes to linux, have a little experience with terminals from linux in the past.
I've followed step by step instructions from this post: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1003099&page=2
However anytime I want to run X it just hangs, gives me a black screen and must restart pc.
Also whenever I press ctrl+alt+F2 I can't seem to get back to the normal kubuntu desktop, ctrl+alt+backspace doesn't work.
Another thing is I figured instead of typing "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop" i had to replace gdm with kdm, and till that point it works but i can't seem to get X working the way it should.

All in all I really don't understand why nVidia brings overscan with their drivers... Before installing nvidia drivers the screen fit perfectly at 1920x1080 without overscan. So I'm thinking it must be something pretty simple like changing one little setting somewhere...

I'm not happy with nVidia's overscan compensation, as it makes everything blurry. I just want that little 0 to change to a 1 or vice versa.
I remember in windows I also had overscan until some genious explained me what to do and change that little 0 into a 1....

For more info this is the hardware I use
GFX-card: nVidia GeForce GTX 460
TV/Monitor: Asus 27T1E (with overscan issues from hell (will be the first thing you notice when you google it >.<) however there is a fix for windows, I hope there is one for Linux too)

[flashyman]

Re: HDMI overscan after installing nvidia

(sorry for the double post, this post is about something new so I thought it was worth a new post)

Ok so I still haven't got it working the way I like, I'm still trapped with nvidia's overscan compensation.
What I was wondering myself is if there aren't any display drivers to mess with instead of nvidia graphics drivers? I assume xorg.conf is from nvidia or something I tried multiple things, but I will not surrender and substract 100 pixels or so from top/bottom and left/right.
I am 100% sure there must be a way to fix this since the resolution was perfect before installing nvidia.
So I am wondering if I change things with the display/monitor driver if I would be able to fix it.

If there is any way to mess around with the display/monitor driver, and if you're not unfamiliar with it, then could you please help me out, or point me in the right directions.

edit1:
Ok if you happen to know a thing or two about this, I took a snapshot of the X server information about the display
here it is:
[img width=400 height=274]http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/9844/snapshot1kf.png[/img]
I'm wondering if it's possible and what will happen to the screen when the 81 x 80 dpi values are changed for the resolution.

edit2:
Ok now i'm just wondering, under the tab Supported Pixmap Formats, it says there are 7 different formats, example:

Pixmap Format #1        1 BPP,Depth: 1 Bit, Scanline padding: 32 Bits
Pixmap Format #2        8 BPP,Depth: 4 Bits, Scanline padding: 32 Bits
...
etc, last one is:
Pixmap Format #7        32 BPP,Depth: 32 Bits, Scanline padding: 32 Bits

How do i get to chose which of the formats I use?


thanks in advance

[flashyman]

Re: HDMI overscan after installing nvidia

I'm really getting headaches from this, and i'm on the point of giving up.
I just don't understand why, why for example the resolution was perfect before installing nvidia and now it's the same resolution but with overscan. My TV/Monitor (yea a TV Monitor) doesn't allow me to change scan settings.

Some more info, the nvidia card is connected to the TV through HDMI.

I tried a lot of messing around with the xorg.conf file, but all of that seems hopeless.
My only hope is to get the EDID out of this monitor, edit it in windows (since there doesn't seem to be something for linux to edit EDID files) reboot again and edit the xorg.conf file so it will read the custom EDID.

Also strange is that nvidia and display and screen settings both only report a 50Hz to 56Hz refresh rate though it should be able to do 60Hz as it does in windows.

[flashyman]

(SOLUTION) HDMI overscan after installing nvidia

Whooohoooooo Yeeeeaaah

NO MORE FREAKIN OVERSCAN!

Thanks to ALLLL of you friendly people for helping me on this issue! (sorry for sarcasm :-X )


_________________________________________________
What I did to fix overscan:

I boot in to windows where I already fixed the same issue using a custom EDID.
I use a program called Phoenix to extract the current (WORKING) EDID from the registry.
In Phoenix: File -> Export: Chose RAW as filetype.
Save file anywhere, just remember where you put it (I made a folder on C:\edid\)
Reboot into kubuntu.
File manager, copy .raw file from windows drive to your linux drive (i suggest putting it in the /etc/ folder next to xorg.conf), rename the .raw file to .bin (not sure if this is necessary)

Now the fun part,
I thought xorg.conf wasn't going to help me at all anymore... well it did...
open terminal: sudo kate /etc/X11/xorg.conf

go down to screen section and add:
Option "CustomEDID" "DEVICENAME:EDID.BIN FILE"

example: Option "CustomEDID" "DFP-1:/etc/edid.bin"

save xorg.conf and reboot
see if magic happens

Another thing, if you also have overscan issue on windows, you might want to play with the extension number, normally would be 0, maybe try 1 or 2, don't know what 3 would do never been in that situation so just try 0, 1 or 2.
In my case to fix the issue in windows in the first place I had to change it from 1 to 0.


I hope this last post is useful others as I have been trying to search for a fix for this on google and most suggest playing around with the xorg.conf but most end up playing with modelines which solves nothing unless you're happy to remove the invisible pixels and make a custom resolution like 1920x1080 would change to 1820x980, which did not make me happy.


edited: reason for edit: typo