A question about overscan

Gadgetguy

Hello all,

I use a 720P Samsung 16:9 TV with no overscan related settings.

The default retropie / emulation station settings lead to left / right / top / bottom borders missing.

So first I enabled overscan by using overscan_scale=1 and overscan values of 64 (should be probably a bit lower - but for now ok) in all directions in the config file. Now when I am at the command prompt I see the full screen (no more missing side, with a decent black border at all sides)

But in emulation station the problem still exists. So for example if I see a list of Arcade (mame) games, the left two letters of the name of the game are missing.

How do I correct for this?

Thank you for any pointers.

mitu

@Gadgetguy Overscan is enabled with disable_overscan=0 - https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Overscan/. overscan_scale is not a recommended setting, since it impacts performance:

NOTE: this feature is generally not recommended: it can reduce image quality because all layers on the display will be scaled by the GPU. Disabling overscan on the display itself is the recommended option to avoid images being scaled twice (by the GPU and the display).

EDIT: have you tried to put your TV into 'Game Mode' and leave out any overscan settings ?

Gadgetguy

@mitu - Thank you for the reply!

There is no game mode on TV as far as I can see. I can set it to 4:3 or wide - that is all I can do. If the TV is in PC mode, then I can adjust overscan on the TV - but PC mode works only for the VGA input not for DVI (there is no HDMI in - so I use an HDMI to DVI cable)

I am using disable_overscan=0 and I have removed overscan_scale.

It is unchanged: console is nice looking (with a decent black border all around), emulation station is cutting the sides off.

So the overscan settings in the config file very much impact the console (that is good) but they do not seem to impact emulation station (that is not so good)

One more update: if I put the tv in 4:3 mode the picture becomes squished - but the missing parts are less (so in full screen there are two letters missing from the game list; on 4:3 mode only one letter and a half is missing).

But I would prefer nothing missing....

quicksilver

@Gadgetguy What theme are you using and what is the exact model number of your tv?

Gadgetguy

@quicksilver Thank you for the reply.

The TV is a Samsung LN-S1951W. I am using the stock setup - no custom theme.

However I have done some more experimenting and I found after trying again
overscan_scale - that it works now. Not sure why it did not work before.

I have to use BOTH overscan_scale=1 and disable_overscan=0 and it works.

Not sure yet if there is a better solution - to avoid an impact on performance.

Thank you for any suggestions to ensure that I do not lose performance.

quicksilver

@Gadgetguy yea I don't see a game mode listed in the manual for that tv. At least you got it figured out.