TV Resolution Issue (1 Viewer)

[jsimmons]

My HTPC is running Vista Ultimate (and MP 1.01) with a ATI 4670 video card and the latest drivers, and it's connected via HDMI cable.

While I was building and testing the HTPC, I had it hooked up to a Samsung 21-inch LCD TV at it's native resolution of 1440x900 and it looked sharp and clear.

I finally hooked it up to our 57-inch Mitsubishi DLP last night, and changed the resolution to 1950x1080 (which I thought was the native resolution on the TV). However, the display looks like what you see when you've selected something other than the native resolution of the monitor - the text is kinda muddy and distorted.

I tried all of the available resolutions, and I even played with the overscan setting in the Catalyst drivers, but nothing seems to fix it.

Is this merely the nature of DLP TV's when displaying in Windows, or is there something I can do about it?

 

[happy]

play around with those settings in the screenshot

make sure refresh rate is correct, and check the correct resolution

 

[jsimmons]

Refresh rate is correct, and I've checked all of the available resolutions. It all looks like crap (but inside MP and the actual movies look okay).

 

[kiwijunglist]

Grab a test pattern Google "tiger dave". Go into CCC and change overscan to 0%. Try 1920x1080 with 0% overscan at 60Hz. View a test pattern at 1:1 pixel mapping and see if you have 1:1 pixel mapping on the DLP.

 

[jsimmons]

I played with the overscan stuff right off. At 1920x1080x60Hz, if I moved the slider to the right, the display got bigger, eventually moving the taskbar completely out of sight (if I recall correctly, that only took a few clicks on the slider). If I move it to the left, the display gets smaller. In no instance did I notice the display improving in terms of quality, but I'll go down and check again.

BTW, there is no percentage displayed on the overscan tab of the Catalyst driver tab. How do I know when it's "0%"?

I'll get the test pattern and see what's what.

Well, overscan is already at 0%. If this is any hint as to what my actual problem is, when I change to a lower resolution, the display gets smaller on the TV and remains centered on the screen. When I do that on a computer monitor, the display changes to the chosen resolution and the display still fills the screen.

 

[kiwijunglist]

In XP there is a slider and you can set it to 0% (range 15% -> 0%, 0% is furthest to the right), i can't find slider under vista CCC however my XP computer has LCD TV and my Vista computer has LCD Monitor.

BTW => have you changed the options on your TV to "Just Scan" or "Pixel Map"

My LCD TV has 4x3 -> 16x9 -> zoom -> zoom 14:9 -> Just scan (1:1 pixel mapping), also some TVs only certain inputs support 1:1 mapping, and some TVs refuse to do 1:1 mapping. If you don't have 1:1 mapping then pic will proabably look best if you set it to 720p50 or 720p60 or 1080p50 or 1080p60.

for test pattern: you need to make sure each pixel is displayed, look at the pixel map.gif on your LCD MONITOR at 100% zoom, and you will see no gradients, then look at the pictures with a zoom of 90% or 110%, you will notice a gradient or notice that each line is slightly different colour.

 

[frenzy]

First thing to do is make sure the tv leaves the image unscaled. There should be an option like that or "just scan" as above

 

[jsimmons]

It appears as if the only way I'm going to be able to clean the text up is to use the TV's DVI hookup, but that ain't gonna happen, so I guess what I have is going to have to be good enough.

 

[velis]

I've had the same problem, but just now managed to fix it.

Note that you need these two things:
Screen fit / Pixel match / something along these lines on the TV

AND (very important)

CCC Overscan setting at 0% (all the way to the right)

When I was fixing this, I thought nothing would help me. No matter what I did, the scaling was always bad.
Naturally, I had CCC Overscan set to ~8% to have the whole screen area covered initially with TV set to 16:9.
Changing scaling options in TV didn't show at all (except for the obvious ones like 4:3, etc.), until I set the CCC Overscan to 0%. This was immediately and visibly better.

I have a Samsung LE37B650 though.

Try again, if your TV has a pixel matching mode, this should work.

 

[guyver_dio]

sounds similar to the problem I was having with my toshiba tv. I know you've said that the refresh rate is correct but have you actually tried changing it? Mine was set to 59hz, I put this on 50hz and it fixed it. Have a look at your tv manual for what the range is for hdmi on that model (mine was 50-60hz) and have a play around with the refresh rate on your graphics settings.

I'm also sitting a bit back from my screen too so I set the text size to 125% so I can read it easier, I think it helped the text look better too, won't fix your main problem but might make it slightly better.