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vidarlo
Asked: 2019-04-07 10:31:55 +0800 CST

Kodi starts as fraction of full screen

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I have a box with kodi installed from default repositories. This works great. However, when kodi starts, it is covers only a fraction of the screen.

Kodi covers fraction of screen (Movie posters are pixelized by me, and not an artifact).

If I go to Systems settings in Kodi and change Monitor it scales properly to full screen. The Monitor settings available is Default and HDMI-1. Kodi running in full screen properly

I do not use a window manager when running kodi, instead selecting it as the desktop on login.

This is, to put it mildly, somewhat irritating. How do I make kodi start in full screen every time?

The video card is a GeForce 210, using the nouveau open source driver.

The monitor is a LG TV, at 1920x1080. The resolution is correct on the login screen and after Kodi starts. Screenshots dimensions are actual dimensions of picture. Monitor is connected via HDMI cable.

The content of /usr/share/xsessions/kodi.desktop is the default:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Kodi
Comment=This session will start Kodi media center
Exec=kodi-standalone
TryExec=kodi-standalone
Type=Application

I could probably modify this script, but that would be overwritten on upgrade, and this is certainly not intended behaviour for kodi.

Kodi was starting correctly up until recently. I previously had the same problem with 16.04.

kodi 18.04

2 Answers

  1. A recent article (January 2019) suggests the default repository will not give you all features and recommends Kodi 18 from stable PPA:

    • First remove older versions of Kodi:

      sudo apt remove --autoremove kodi kodi-data kodi-bin

    • Then install from Kodi repository:

      sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa

      sudo apt update && sudo apt install kodi

    Personally I would simply run Kodi within Ubuntu 16.04 Unity Desktop but I have a GeForce GTX 970M. I guess with a GeForce 210 card that would be too much overhead.

    Option 2

    Inspired from comments under this new question: How to make Kodi something you can run from Ubuntu login screen without password?

    You could create a new user ID called TV that auto starts Kodi in full-screen mode and does nothing else. It would not load up unnecessary apps that come with a regular user auto start after signon.

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  2. In my experience proprietary Nvidia driver could work better and could probably use VDPAU functions of your graphics adapter. Even then, Kodi 17.6 works better in Xubuntu session than in Kodi session in my experience. In Kodi session where Kodi runs standalone, it can not find as good graphics settings, I think. I do not know which settings that I set in Xubuntu session affect in Kodi session. For example I have enabled "Sync to VBlank" to disable screen tearing in OpenGL Settings of "NVIDIA X Server Settings" utility in Xubuntu session. Newer Kodi installed from PPA shown in another answer seems to work better in Kodi session (than the old one).

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