Need some PC - HDTV setup help

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efilflah
Posts: 439
Joined: 16 Aug 2006 09:19
Location: Cardiff, Wales

Need some PC - HDTV setup help

Post by efilflah » 05 Sep 2007 03:04

So I've bought an HDTV and I've been having major troubles trying to get it to play nice with my PC.

It's a Hannspree 37 inch WXGA (1366x768) LCD tv that supports 720p/1080i @ 60hz.

What I want, is a dual monitor setup with my old 19 inch CRT as the primary and the HDTV as a secondary for movies and shizzle.

I'm not unfamiliar with dual monitor setups, but I am unfamiliar with HDTVs and their pain in the ass-ness when it comes to accepting specific inputs.

Firstly I had a VGA cable with dvi/vga converter attached in the DVI port of my X800xt and into the D-SUB in of my HDTV.

This worked well enough except that my TV only seems to accept 4:3 aspect ratio resolutions over VGA and it stretches it to fit the 16:9 aspect ratio of my big ass TV, making text look awful, but apart from that, it looks decent enough.

Anyway, since I wanted a proper 16:9 resolution I went out and got a DVI-D -> HDMI cable to use thinking that all my problems would be sorted.

So I hook it up and set the resolution to 1280 x 720, and low and behold the fucking thing has major overscan problems. Cropping the top sides and bottom off maximised windows etc.

I downloaded powerstrip and tried fiddling with the settings to sort the overscan out but its just not happening and I'm pretty pissed off because I'm ill and I've been trying to solve this for days and I just have no clue if it's even possible or not.

Smash, vhw, Dexy, anyone, I needs adviceage.

smash
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Re: Need some PC - HDTV setup help

Post by smash » 05 Sep 2007 21:36

efilflah wrote:So I've bought an HDTV and I've been having major troubles trying to get it to play nice with my PC.

It's a Hannspree 37 inch WXGA (1366x768) LCD tv that supports 720p/1080i @ 60hz.

What I want, is a dual monitor setup with my old 19 inch CRT as the primary and the HDTV as a secondary for movies and shizzle.

I'm not unfamiliar with dual monitor setups, but I am unfamiliar with HDTVs and their pain in the ass-ness when it comes to accepting specific inputs.

Firstly I had a VGA cable with dvi/vga converter attached in the DVI port of my X800xt and into the D-SUB in of my HDTV.

This worked well enough except that my TV only seems to accept 4:3 aspect ratio resolutions over VGA and it stretches it to fit the 16:9 aspect ratio of my big ass TV, making text look awful, but apart from that, it looks decent enough.

Anyway, since I wanted a proper 16:9 resolution I went out and got a DVI-D -> HDMI cable to use thinking that all my problems would be sorted.

So I hook it up and set the resolution to 1280 x 720, and low and behold the fucking thing has major overscan problems. Cropping the top sides and bottom off maximised windows etc.

I downloaded powerstrip and tried fiddling with the settings to sort the overscan out but its just not happening and I'm pretty pissed off because I'm ill and I've been trying to solve this for days and I just have no clue if it's even possible or not.

Smash, vhw, Dexy, anyone, I needs adviceage.
I'm kinda dumb when it comes to this..but I will say this. You need to make sure and detail out how you are transfering the data from the pc to the tv. Specifically, converters, types of cables, etc.

DVI has encryption that passes over it, and it is very possible that you are messing with the encryption. This is the latest in the copyright protection methods. My buddy had a DVI switchbox with DVI cables that didn't handle the encryption the right way and had shit loads of 'quirks' until he got the right cables.

List out A -> B all the way with the parts and we'll figure out if that is it.

efilflah
Posts: 439
Joined: 16 Aug 2006 09:19
Location: Cardiff, Wales

Post by efilflah » 05 Sep 2007 22:09

Ok cheers smash.

Hannspree YT08-37E1 = TV
Ati X800xt (NGO 1.7.3 drivers) = Gfx Card
IIYAMA VisionMaster 1451 = CRT

I'm using the SONY GDM-FW900 driver for the TV as it gives the most available resolutions at driver level to try out.

I'm using the DVI-out port of my X800xt connected to the TV's HDMI-in port using This DVI-D Cable.

If I use the DVI->VGA converter that came with my X800xt and plug that into the DVI-out and use a standard VGA cable to connect to the VGA-in on my TV, then I can (discovered today) actually set up a 1368x768 resolution which is close enough to the 1366x768 native resolution of the TV, but the quality of the text is still worse than with the overscanned DVI->HDMI method (even though that method isn't great either).

Am I clutching at straws here? Should I just accept that the quality will never be like that of a 1:1 CRT monitor?

I could try and use the VGA out of my X800xt instead of using a converter on the DVI port and see if it improves it, but I dunno man, it just seems like I should be able to shrink the overscan but this TV doesn't have any options to do that in any menu, and I can't seem to do it with powerstrip, and since it's detected as a FDP in the ATI control panel, there are like 0 options for it.


:(

Dex
Big Daddy
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Joined: 04 Aug 2006 13:41
Location: Long Beach, CA

Post by Dex » 06 Sep 2007 12:24

Who the fuck is Dex?

efilflah
Posts: 439
Joined: 16 Aug 2006 09:19
Location: Cardiff, Wales

Post by efilflah » 06 Sep 2007 23:02

ZOMG dex make post....minus help <_<

Progress report:

So using the DVI -> HDMI cable and Catalyst Control Centre's custom HD resolution option, I managed to eliminate the overscan on dvi so that the viewable area is 1232x696 (in 720p mode), it looks decent.

I'd have loved the 1368x768 over DVI but I can't see a way of getting it working unless I use VGA and I got no chance at 1:1 mapping.

Not that this all matters if I get a 360 or other HD playback device which will auto scale to fit, but at least I got the extended desktop part looking decent.

Dex
Big Daddy
Posts: 1377
Joined: 04 Aug 2006 13:41
Location: Long Beach, CA

Post by Dex » 07 Sep 2007 08:49

efilflah wrote:ZOMG dex make post....minus help <_<

Progress report:

So using the DVI -> HDMI cable and Catalyst Control Centre's custom HD resolution option, I managed to eliminate the overscan on dvi so that the viewable area is 1232x696 (in 720p mode), it looks decent.

I'd have loved the 1368x768 over DVI but I can't see a way of getting it working unless I use VGA and I got no chance at 1:1 mapping.

Not that this all matters if I get a 360 or other HD playback device which will auto scale to fit, but at least I got the extended desktop part looking decent.
I hooked my PC to my 1080p in the past without problems in the past, so I don't think I can help.

I attempted the same as you did, DVI-to-HDMI, and it auto-scaled and fit everything, with no overscan... once I set the TV to recognize the PC input & set my computer resolution to MAX (i forget what it was). It sounds like a combo of your TV and your PC video card. Try one tweak at a time, and see how it works. Try the refresh rate... try different resolutions... even try the settings on your TV and see if it has an auto-something feature.

I eventually stopped using my TV as a PC display when I got my dual 17" LCD setup on my desk. It was too much of a hassle to have a resolution for dual-screens, and then to change it when I swapped one out for my TV.
Plus the 360 can stream content via media center (vista)

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