[Rollo]

XBMC Frodo 12.3
GeForce 210
Windows XP SP3
Toshiba 32HFX73 32" HD tube TV with DVI input, 4:3 aspect ratio
up to date NVidia drivers and Control Panel

Just hooked up this old TV to my old XP desktop. I've been trying to fix a scaling issue. When using either an current or old driver it displays at the correct aspect ratio, but cuts off all four sides of the desktop, approx 2/3 of the taskbar and an equal amount the other 3 sides. When I attempt to adjust the screen size, it will fit everything in, but totally hoses the aspect ratio. 4:3 video is displayed as a square.

After a whole lot of troubleshooting, I found that the generic Windows driver makes everything work perfectly. Problem solved, right?

Wrong. When I attempt to open XBMC it won't open. I get an error message, then a black screen. Reinstall the driver, XBMC opens, but again, everything is cropped. A moderator at the NVidia site says there is no good solution other than running off the VGA port on the card, but the TV doesn't have a VGA port, ONLY DVI and the standard video connections.

So, the question is, can XBMC be configured to open using the generic Windows XP driver? I may be able to use a VGA cable with a gender changer/adapter to DVI, if they even exist, but picture quality would degrade.

[Rollo]

Update: Error message says
ERROR: Unable to create GUI. exiting.

When I click OK, it goes back to the desktop. I've edited my original post for clarity.
Not a fault of XBMC, its an NVidia problem, but this is very frustrating.

[black_eagle]

Stick a copy of OpenELEC on a usb drive and boot off it. You may well find that it can drive your card just fine in which case, as support for XBMC under XP has been dropped, it might be time to consider a change of OS if you just want to run xbmc.

BTW, vga to dvi will cost you around £5 or less.

[Rollo]

I also run other A/V apps. Not crazy about purchasing a new O/S for this old beast, only 2GB of ram. I'll check out the OpenELEC though. The vga to dvi sounds interesting, too. Thanks for the heads up.

Anyone else care to chime in, I'm all ears. Truly, I'd like to be able to run XBMC all the time as a DLNA streamer, and still have access to the PC for other AV duties like Spotify in particular. Its available for Linux, but I'm not familiar with Linux much at all.

[black_eagle]

black_eagle would like to point out that there are spotify plugins available for xbmc I would also point out that I am running an Ubuntu minimal install with XBMC on a 3Ghz Pentium4 (single core) in 1GB of memory (usually has around half or more of that free) and an 80Gb HDD - Only new part this year was an Nvidia GT 610 which was around £33. The rest of it is 7~8 years old. Haven't found anything to make it stumble yet!!

[Rollo]

No problems with viewing online video from a browser, I assume. Dunno if I'm ready to take the leap from Windows to Linux, but this sounds intriguing. I suppose I could also do software installs on the bootable flash drive, essentially having a dual boot system. I do have a fair amount of software on the PC which I'd like to use on occasion.

Interesting.