Downscaling KDE display?

[megosdog]

Okay, don't shoot me for this, but I had this bright idea to buy a 43" TCL Roku TV to use as an extra large monitor for my PC. So, um, yeah. It apparently only scales to 1080p, meaning my screen is HUGE right now. So, what I'm wanting to do is to find a way to downscale the image so it's not so gigantic. I'd push this to 4k and be done with it, but my video card, a Radeon 5750, only goes to 1600p. So yeah, I'm in a conundrum. I know at one time KDE allowed you to underscale your display below 100% for just such a situation. But I'm not sure how to do that. I looked around, but everyone is trying to go BIGGER and I want to go smaller. Yes, I realize that at 1080p I'm not gonna get the best quality, but I'm willing to tinker with this and try to make it work.

Is there any way to accomplish this, or did I make a major oops in getting this UHD TV as an extra large monitor? Any help is welcome. I'd like to simulate at least 1600p if possible. If that's not possible, is there some way to trick the TV into letting me use the bigger resolution even though the card can't directly support it? I mean, I'm open to ideas.

[Snowhog]

Just 'throwing it out there', but might anything in How to detect and configure an output with xrandr? be useful?

[woodsmoke]

Hi
Interesting question!

I have, for several years used a Zenith 53" diagonal t.v. as a "computer monitor" and also as a "home theater using Kubuntu" ( not Myth or anything" I purchased the t.v. because it had both the RGB inputs, the last one as far as I know and also HDTV.

I have used a Radeon card etc. but when I built the wall computer I needed to not have a video card "hanging out horizontally in a slot" for fear of the slot getting "wallered out" of place so I elected for an onboard "Intel" card on mobo and it has given great results for doing...shall we say..."light" wordprocedssing etc. and also watching video, gaming etc.

the display is

LG-TV HDMI-2
Resolution 1920 x 1080
Refresh rate: auto

On the right hand side of the "settings / display" box are two buttons: Unify Outputs and Scale Display

Clicking Scale display shows that the scale is a zero but there is a slider that will allow it to be moved to what "seems" to be "1" but slidering will increase the scale to "3" if desired.

SO to answer your particular question I do NOT see a function to DOWNscale the setting.

As to the reply about Xrander I have used it to rotate a display when I wanted to use a little used flat screen as a VERTICAL monitor for writing in a word processor to see the display like a "sheet of paper" in portrait at full size.

I did NOT try to adjust the scale but there are a lot of settings and it DID automagically find the monitor in vertical mode.. so, it might be worth a look see, BUT be prepared for some possibly REALLY weird results .

again, interesting question.

woodsmok

[megosdog]

Hmm, okay, I read through that and it looks like this block would give me what I want:

Section "Screen"
Identifier "My Screen"
Subsection "Display"
Virtual 2048 2048
EndSubSection
EndSection

IE, it changes, if I'm understanding this right, the display size of the desktop without actually changing the monitor resolution, which would be fine. So even if the physical display is still 1080p, I'd like to get the desktop to shrink down so it doesn't look like I'm staring at a billboard at point blank range. The crazy part is, I've done this before, but it's been so stinking long I forgot how to do it. lol. I'm also not sure where to safely put that entry. I see these two files, but I'm not sure if either would do the job, or if I need to create a 3rd, based on what I'm reading.

/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-amdgpu.conf
less /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-radeon.conf

So yeah, I don't really care if everything stays 1080p "officially" (from what I read on this tv, the next jump up is 4k, with nothing in between) just so long as my desktop pretends to be at least 1440p. Also, I tried the suggestions in the article to no avail. Also, here's the hardware I'm working with:

https://www.newegg.com/powercolor-ra...9SIAGSC9PN0424
https://www.newegg.com/p/1VH-01J3-00...9SIA1CZ9BN9035

If it turns out this won't work, and there's no way to make this do its thing at higher than 1080p, or even at a faked 1440p, I've got time to return the TV. I was kinda hoping to make this an extra large monitor, but it's looking like, if I can't make this work, I'm gonna have to fail this out.

[megosdog]

Hi woodsmoke, just saw your answer after posting. Yeah, mine has the scale display thing too, but starts at 1 and only goes up. So already checked that. T_T

[megosdog]

Hmm, this is interesting. Was doing some other experimentation with the new TV and I think I just spotted some color and display issues with it. So I may have just solved this issue without even trying. I think I'm gonna take this TV out of circulation and return it RMA and get something different instead. I mean, it's a great, low cost monitor, but it is already displaying some rather...eh, undesirable characteristics. Nuts. Oh well.

[woodsmoke]

Hi megosdog

well that is no good. but, hopefully they will cut you some slack on it and please keep us informed, I'm just a hardware kinda guy and so am interested.

One of these days mine will bite the dust and I'll be purchasing something like you have.

woodsmoke

[megosdog]

Will do. I think though, going forward, I'm going to be doing a bit more homework than I did this last time to make sure I don't run into the same issues again. But, if I do, I have a good starting point to work from.