Strange behaviour - but I like it...

[dede468]

Casper computer with Intel 2nd generation video card. Monitor is Beko TV for internet television. Mint Sylvia Cinnamon. TV is set to PC and normal monitor cable is in use.

I have always had a problem with screen resolution and the fit of the screens to my Beko TV. 1024 is normally automatically selected but the screen is slightly off to the right with the volume at the bottom and the X to close the screen at the top, not showing. I have been unable to resolve this and haven't tried for weeks now.

Last evening I accidentally found that scrolling the mouse on the desktop changed the screen resolution similar to scrolling Firefox browser screen size percentage. It has never done this before.

This was excellent as normally I have only 2 resolutions showing in Display setting. 1024 x 768 and 640 x 480. Last evening TV pictures fit the screen fully instead of having black space at top and bottom and my bookmarks filled the width of the screen - or I could scroll so that they did - instead of having some not showing.

Today I am back to a fixed 1024 x 768 and menus dropping off the right hand side of the screen as they have done for months. Any other linux distro does exactly the same and I have tried many.

Anyone got any idea how this happened and moreover how I can make it do it again? It was excellent.

[gm10]

Assuming your TV actually supports higher resolutions, the resolution not being correctly detected is usually due to a faulty cable. There are also ways to force the resolution but trying a different cable is the first thing I'd do.

[dede468]

I have just downloaded the TV manual and accordingly the Display function appears to be correctly detecting it. I have also tried replacing the monitor cable with a spare to no avail. It seems to me that if the TV has a fixed resolution but was able to be altered last evening, then maybe it is Mint which was giving the strange results and feeding them to the TV??? Could that be? Normally a page fills the screen but desktop, files, everything was customisable for size just with the mouse. On this 32 inch screen I found I could scroll the Mint logo from about 12 inches down to about one inch.

I think the key factor here is that I was simply scrolling to alter the size of everything on the screen. If it had been computer to screen resolution then surely I would have had to select a different resolution, not scroll, I noticed that changing resolution via Display [1028 down to 800 for example] is not instant which this was - as I said - as quick as changing the zoom on Firefox. In fact it must have been a zoom by the way it worked - but zooming the whole of Mint.

[gm10]

I don't know what you did yesterday based on your description, it's possible you just activated the screen magnifier accessibility feature. So what did the manual say that the native resolution of your TV is?

[dede468]

That's what confused me. I was just watching TV when I decided to change channel with the wireless mouse and found that the screen size changed. TV according to manual is 1280 x 768. It must be zoom. I've never seen this before, So..... Next question has to be how can I zoom the picture with the mouse?

[gm10]

Here's a step by step guide on how to add a new screen resolution, you can use that to add support for your 1280x768 res: http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/201 ... u-desktop/

The screen magnifier you should be finding via the menu or via the accessibility options. I'm not running Cinnamon so I'm not entirely sure what it's called.

[dede468]

Thanks very much for your help.