MX Linux Forum

Friend of mine says that she cannot see the top and bottom area of movies when connected in TV screen with HDMI connection. Does it depend on an missing utility software or video card? She runs latest MX 18.2

It depends on her TV. Is it HD, FHD, 4K...etc...?
Also, is it 16:9 ratio? (16:9 is the most common ration to see everything in full screen mode.
Many TVs can change ratios using the remote control. I bet she has it on 4:3 or something similar which would explain the top and bottom missing.

Could be the player also, Smplayer has a zoom function that can cause this regardless of aspect ratio if it's zoomed in too far.
I think the i and o keys are the defaults for zoom in & zoom out.

I have experienced the same thing in in the past in varying degrees. First you need to make sure the correct device, screen size, and aspect ratio along with the dimension settings are selected correctly in Settings> Display. It also could be the settings on the TV need to be adjusted. I have also found that different integrated video chipsets or video cards vary how HDMI is displayed on the TV. I had and have different computers that the ones with the Intel integrated graphics gave me the most trouble of displaying correctly where I had AMD Vega integrated graphics displayed more correctly but not quite correct. After upgrading the CPU from an AMD Athlon to a Ryzen 7 which required a video card, I got an ATI Radeon card which displayed perfectly on the TV. If you have everything set correctly and still have it displaying too big off the screen try playing with the video settings on the computer to get the best results.

I had this problem once, some years ago when using a Panasonic plasma tv as a monitor via HDMI...The solution in my case was found by turning off "Overscan" from the TV resolution display settings..

Thanks for the replies. In her screenshot, I also noticed an other short come. The movie doesn't cover whole TV screen. Check here uploaded image and line illustration:
http://amurt.ro/download/mx/full-screen.jpg

That the movie doesn't cover top to bottom is common. If the movie is on a wider screen than the tv is wide.

If it covers top to bottom it will need to be zoomed in, which results in losing info on both sides, or if you don't zoom, it will get squished and not look proper like it does now.

rasat wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2019 5:22 am Thanks for the replies. In her screenshot, I also noticed an other short come. The movie doesn't cover whole TV screen. Check here uploaded image and line illustration:
http://amurt.ro/download/mx/full-screen.jpg

A picture is worth a thousand words. When not playing movies, does the MX desktop fill the entire screen or is it limited to the portion of the screen where the movies show up? If the deskto is restricted to the same area then the problem is in the communication between the computer and the tv. The first thing I would try would be to trying in increase the resolution the computer is using. You should be able to get to this adjustment via Application Menu > Settings > Display. The other approach is to adjust the resolution used by the tv via its remote control.

The exact details of what to do will depend on all the system information and information about the tv. My guess is that the tv is using its maximum resolution and the signal coming from the computer is at a lower resolution so the tv makes the computer screen take up only a portion of the tv screen. If you can increase the display resolution in the computer then that should make it take up more of the screen. If you can't, then you need to adjust the tv so the computer desktop fills the screen. (or fills most of the screen). There are usually a number of modes available to deal with different resolutions and different aspect ratios.

> When not playing movies, does the MX desktop fill the entire screen...

Doesn't fill the screen. She noticed the problem when trying full screen online movie in Firefox (see below link). But same also happens with movie apps. But first question, why top and bottom areas are missing in full screen?
http://amurt.ro/download/mx/normal-screen.jpg

What is the refresh rate?