Anyway, I've just rebuilt my mythbuntu box from 8.04 to 9.10.. which I thought would be a great time to upgrade the hardware and fresh install.
So I now have:
Intel DG45ID motherboard (yeah... I know, it's intel, but it was business surplus)
Intel E6300 cpu
2GB ram
nVidia 9500GT passive with tv out (non-hdmi model)
I was initially planning on using the onboard video (hdmi) to an LCD TV... but still don't have the cash. So I grabbed a 9500GT for much less.
Okay, now for the problem...
Initially was trying composite video, but didn't have luck with the video displaying... once X started using the nvidia driver (vesa driver worked fine.. but no accel).
I switched to component and that worked! Woohoo! But I can't fix the overscan issue... as the system is booting I can see the black borders around the terminal like screen as mythbuntu is firing up, but as soon as nvidia driver kicks in and X boots, overscan maxes out. I.e. the picture extends quite far off the edges of the screen (about an inch or more too big on a 68cm tv).
I mucked about in nvidia-settings, but the overscan slider isn't available anymore it seems, which was present on the previous install I had (different nvidia driver though). I tried modifying my xorg.conf without any luck to override "TVOverscan" property.. but the default overscan setting is 0.0 anyway (off), so I don't know why it's bugging out once the driver loads.
I'm in Australia, so the tv is 50hz here PAL B/G. The picture quality and colour reproduction is great - much better than the fx5500 it replaces. The overscan issue is my only beef. I've read the next step is mucking about with modelines.... eek!
If anyone can think of why the overscan would be maxing out for no apparent reason?