Why is the Amiga display not centered?
 

A newbie question I always had and I dunno why I never asked: Why is the display of the Amiga never centered? Some more than others but none of them stay in the middle of my screen.

I never noticed on my 1084S as I could use horizontal/vertical position controls, but on modern TVs (and on emulation) you can clearly see that the Amiga's display is leaning towards the right of the screen and in the former there's basically no way to fix that.

Meanwhile, the CD32 seems to be all right.

Why is this?

You can see at CLI and pictures that everything is centered, without using any filters http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPqQb9Ca8gU

I have used real hardware A600, A1200 with a modern LCD via RGB-Scart and via RF and the picture although often bordered was always centered.

Using WinUAE and FS_UAE on a laptop connected to a 43" plasma via HDMI and picture is dead center.

You are not understanding me. This is not a WinUAE question. I KNOW you can center the display on WinUAE. But this is not the Amiga's NATURAL way of displaying a picture.

On a REAL Amiga, the picture sways to the right of the monitor. It happens on an LCD TV through RGB, it happens on a monitor through Composite and it happens on my scandoubled display on a 14" VGA CRT. As I said, I probably just kept the image corrected on my old 1084S back in the day, but I do remember changing the resolution would make it move.

This is a FACT and it isn't up for doubting. My A600 a bit less, my a1200 a LOT.
I just checked the CD32 again, and it does have more border on the left side, but not too much. So far, is the most centered Amiga display I have seen. The A500 I had briefly did this too. Every Amiga does it. But why??

I tried with my CD32 and A500, connected to Funai CRT TV, C 1084S monitor and LG LCD TV. PAL Amiga with PAL TVs, picture is centered. I think some modern TV may don't like Amiga resolution and can not center screen.

Dude, this happened also with 1084. As I said, you can control horizontal position on older CRT TVs and monitors reason why you probably NEVER notice on those (because you set them and forgot about it). WinUAE without screen centering also displays the image swaying to the right. My machines are all PAL. All displays show this behaviour, some more than others, on all outputs. The image ISN'T centered!

I need an educated answer.

My CRT TV and LCD TV have not horizontal or vertical control position, just aspect ratio and zooming. My cousin had A500 with color Sanyo CRT TV and I had black & white CRT TV without brand and we never used screen centering. I only used that with 1084s monitor as previous owner had fun with knobs. Some Amiga computers may have this problem but not all.

I also noticed this from the very beginning in "the early days". Games always showed far right with most of the border on the left. If you run 1.3 preferences you also see that the default screen position is far right. I don't know why.

It's curious because I can vouch what Akira is saying. I've had 6 Amigas A500 KS1.2, A600, 2xA1200, A4000 and CD32 and all of them shifted the image to the right. I still have the A500, A4000 and CD32 and they continue to shift the image to the right even with modern monitors. In the A4000 back in the time i've upgraded the system with a CV64 which has the passthrough connector from the 23pin to the internal input VGA connector and on my 14" Microvitec the AGA image was dead center as was the RTG. So for some reason the CV64 aligned the Amiga signal. The same happens with a Sony 15" Multiscan that I use on it for the last 11 years.
Back in the day I knew an interacted with about 15 people with Amigas from A500 to A600 and ALL of them the image shifted to the right since they had to regulate the H knobs on the monitors.
This is my expirience with the subject.

I know what Akira is talking about, in the day, when I owned the A500 & A1200, there was always horizontal adjustments, they were never centered on my Philips CM8833 or my TV at the time. The TV I couldn't center, that's why I ended up buying the monitor for the A500, just so I could center it.

All CRT TV's at the time were never very accurately centered anyway, the adjustments were probably done by some monkey YTS kid who didn't care. With a computer, I guess, the accuracy was far more important than a TV picture because the transmitted picture always had a fair amount of overscan to contend with, and that adjustment was a preference to the person adjusting it.

So my guess is the UK guidelines for the setting, being a standard frequency/voltage at the time, were not accurate as it has to be today and caused the screen to be off center.

Yeah I knew I couldn't have been the only one noticing. This is a fact and has nothing to do with the displays.

I don't think it's a UK thing as I experienced this with PAL and NTSC Amigas, with american, german, argentine and UK televisions, german and american Amigas, chinese monitors and blah. In all displays, the image sways to the right, some more than others. If you turn off centering in WinUAE, you can usually notice a slight sway to the right too.

On my usual setup, which goes through a small 7" monitor, I have Workbench set up so Overscan makes up for this difference. When you enter Overscan preferences, notice that you can drag the screen a LOT to the left but not to the right.

I assume they did it this way because any earlier horizontal position would have disabled high numbered sprite(s).

Of course in real world only one sprite was in use (mouse pointer) 99.99% of time in WB but I am sure designers didn't have a time machine and of course they wanted their demo programs to work which probably used sprites because blitter was too difficult and new thing!

AND AS I TOLD YOU ON A REAL AMIGA CONNECTED TO A REAL LCD TV MY PICTURE WAS DEAD CENTER SO THIS IS CLEARLY NOT AN ISSUE FOR EVERYBODY.

Whats with the caps?? Could you express any more attitude via text if you tried? Edit: Removed abusive name calling - BippyM

A2000HD & Indivision ECS with LCD monitor, picture shifts to the right. I have the centering as far left as it will go, and it still is a little shifted to the right. A500+ with GBS 8220 is centered after adjustment, but shifts right without adjustment.

I only see Akira emphasizing the words 'KNOW, NATURAL, REAL & FACT' other than that, i don't see any attitude, or harm, in his post.

However I do in yours and there's absolutely no need for it.

Oh please, his post reeks of attitude..And arrogance.

"This is a FACT and it isn't up for doubting" Seriously?

As i said i had no such problems with real hardware so this issue does not affect everybody.

And any emphasis on the word 'fact' is obvious attitude....his word is law and all who disagree are wrong..

It seems nowadays in EAB you can get away with violently breaking the rules.
So "emphasis in the word fact" is "attitude"? What world do you live in?

People like you remind me why I left the forums long ago and why I shouldn't have returned. Get out of this thread, as you can see from posts from OTHER people, you clearly have no idea of what you are talking about and even more, resort to aggressive posts and name calling. I clearly cannot remember when was the last time someone was allowed to call someone else "cunt" in here on in real life (where you wouldn't last two seconds if you told me that to my face).

anyway...i get this problem with my lcd's.

i can "sort of" fix it to some extent by moving the overscan prefs slightly to the left and saving(not stretching to fit the screen),doesent work with everything though.

so..i would be interested as to a solution,if there is one.

Yup that works for me too but not on games... and the fact that you can move the screen a lot to the left but not to the right in Overscan settings emphasizes the notion that there is something going on there.

If not even Toni Wilen knows why the display is off center, we don't have much hope here :shocked

exactly,if i use games(whdload in general) the screen shifts to the right again.

i wonder if whdload ignores workbench overscan prefs completly,or doesent use it.