[UncleDirtNap]

I had a functioning setup using some older version of linux and XBMC that I thought I'd like to try and bring up to date. Everything was going fine and then I ran into a problem that I can't seem to find anyone else experiencing and was hoping for a suggestion.

I installed Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit (lucid lynx) on a Intel Core 2 duo 3ghz machine with 4gb of ram with an ATI Radeon HD 4550 w/hdmi output.

Installed XBMC using the PPAs with no hickups, selected the Confluence skin.

XBMC starts up but with built in drivers output to a Panasonic plasma overscans the desktop in Linux and the XMBC GUI to the point important parts of the display are off the screen even though the display properties seem to show the correct resolution being used (1280 x 720) Even so I was able to start up some videos (AVIs, MKVs etc) and they all played with no problem.

Applied the ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX drivers using the hardware drivers tool in Ubuntu and this addressed the severe over scanning so that the Ubuntu desktop and XBMC GUI now display properly but playing any video just results in flashing colored screens.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

[divingmule]

I think this is fixed in the newer builds.
Try changing system>video>playback>render method
Try disabling desktop effects.

[UncleDirtNap]

Desktop effects was already disabled, remembered that from the last installation, but changing the rendering method to software did the trick.

Thanks for the suggestion