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I've been asking everywhere, but there doesn't seem to be a solution for this. When I send 720x480 to my CRT, there is about 40 pixels of underscan on each side, obviously because the TV is a 4:3 ratio and 720x480 is not.

Is there a way to "shrink" the active mac desktop to conform it to a 4:3 ratio while still sending 720x480p over HDMI? I have tried several app-based solutions and they don't seem to cover something like this. Fairly positive this would work with Linux.

Thanks, folks!

Early 2015 Macbook Pro 13" High Sierra, Intel integrated graphics

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  • FYI 720x480 is 4:3 on an analog NTSC CRT TV, because NTSC TVs had rectangular pixels that were taller than they were wide. Anyway, so, you want to send 720x480 over HDMI to a modern square-pixel display, so you want it to have 40 pixel wide pillarboxes (vertical black bars) on each side so the desktop is still 640x480? And sending 640x480 doesn’t work for you? Doesn’t your display have a mode to not stretch (i.e. not “zoom”) 640x480, leaving it pillarboxed?
    – Spiff
    Commented Sep 20, 2018 at 15:40
  • I assure you it is not 4:3. This box that I bought which is translating HDMI to Component (YPbPr) only accepts wide formats, I would attempt 800x600 as well, but it does strange things to this converter. Essentially, the vertical resolution is fine, 480 is perfect, 720 horizontal leads to overscan by pretty much exactly 40. I've been through this for about a week and I do not need to change the resolution of the signal over HDMI, I need to make the mac believe the desktop work area, fullscreen videos, etc is only 640 pixels wide in order for it to display properly through the converter.
    – dumpsterac1d
    Commented Sep 20, 2018 at 16:02
  • I don't have a solution for you, but I suspect the problem is that your HDMI-to-Component box is sending EDID info that makes macOS think it can't do 640x480. There are ways to tell macOS to override the EDID info it gets from a given "display" (in this case your converter box), but it's a bit tricky and would take some work. See embdev.net/topic/284710 or just search for "macOS EDID override"
    – Spiff
    Commented Sep 21, 2018 at 3:30

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