Question 1.11: Using a Composite Video Monitor/TV The text on your low-reso......

The Raspberry Pi has two types of video output, HDMI and composite video. Of these, the HDMI is much better quality. So if you’re intending to use a composite video as your main screen, you may want to think again.

If you are using such a screen—say, because you need a really small screen—then you need to make a few adjustments to fit the video output to the screen. You need to make some changes to the file /boot/config.txt. You can edit it on the Raspberry Pi by issuing the following command in a Terminal session:

If the text is too small to read and you do not have an HDMI monitor, then you can also edit the file by removing the SD card from the Raspberry Pi and inserting it into your computer. The file will then be in the top-level directory on the SD card, so you can use a text editor on your PC to modify it.

You need to know the resolution of your screen. For a lot of small screens, this will be 320 by 240 pixels. Find the two lines in the file that read:

Remove the # from the front of each line and change the two numbers to the width and height of your screen. In the following example, these lines have been modified to be 320 by 240:

Save the file and restart your Raspberry Pi. You should find that everything has become a lot easier to read. You will probably also find that there is a big thick border around the screen. To adjust this, see Recipe 1.13.

Discussion

There are many low-cost CCTV monitors that can make a great companion for the Raspberry Pi when you’re making something like a retro games console (Recipe 4.6). However, these monitors are often very low resolution.

See Also

For another tutorial on using composite monitors, see this Adafruit’s tutorial.

Also, see Recipe 1.13 and Figure 1-10 to adjust your picture when you’re using the HDMI video output.