For a couple of months I’ve been messing around with using my Pi to play 4:3 video content on my CRT television using the composite av output. I’ve never had to troubleshoot so many different problems to get what is supposed to be a built-in feature to work.
I was able to manually edit the config files to get it to output 640*480i NTSC using the composite av output. That’s about where my success ended. I was never able to get overscan fixed but at least Kodi can somewhat accommodate for that.
Then for some reason, Kodi is seeing the display as being 720*480 which is a 3:2 resolution and no option to change it. Even with calibration, this creates a lot of weird geometry issues both with the content but also the display in general.
I have been having issues with audio output as well. First I had no output, but was able to get pulse audio to at least be able to control the output. I eventually had to use pactl to boost the volume to 150% as the output was too low to be audible even with the TV cranked. Boosting it made the audio audible but created distortion. Even worse, while 150%, was good enough for TV shows, any modern movies were still too quiet and need 200% which creates an intolerable amount of distortion.
Today I got fed up and picked up an ONN hdmi to composite adapter from Walmart https://www.walmart.com/ip/onn-Composite-AV-to-HDMI-Adapter-1080P-HD-Quality-Indoor-Black-6-5in-x-1-5in-0-3lb-None/575028877
The Pi recognized it immediately. All I had to do was change the display resolution to 640*480. Kodi detected the correct resolution and looks far better. The video signal is much cleaner. Audio is fairly clean (not distortion but still think there’s some funniness in the adapter). The only remaining issue is still overscan. Kodi can accommodate, but it needs to be fixed every time you open the app.
Any advice on overscan settings for the HDMI adapter? It would be nice to see the whole desktop.