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Darthmaul4114 · Dec 21, 2005, 02:25 AM

I'm back from college for a few weeks and earlier today I hooked up my powerbook to my downstairs TV via DVI for the first time. It looks absolutely beautiful except for one problem. I had it display at 1280x720 except all of the edges of the screen weren't displayed. it sort of looked like this:

the model of the TV is a Sony KDS-R60XBR1. it actually did the same thing when we hooked up my friend's PC. so I assume it is a problem with the TV or something. anyone have any ideas on how to get it to display properly?

mduell · Dec 21, 2005, 02:30 AM

Instead of feeding it at 1280x720 signal and having it upscale, change the output resolution to 1920x1080 (the KDS-R60XBR1's native resolution).

Darthmaul4114 · 03:49 AM

Originally Posted by mduell

Instead of feeding it at 1280x720 signal and having it upscale, change the output resolution to 1920x1080 (the KDS-R60XBR1's native resolution).

i tried it at a bunch of different resolutions and none of them worked properly. i think the 1920x1080 display put the desktop like in the middle of the screen and tiled my wallpaper. kind of hard to explain but it was weird

*edit* i was wrong. it just does the same thing as when i have it on 1280x720, it looks great, just the edges are cut off again. on taking a screen cap and opening it in preview, it showed that the whole screen was working, but i just cant see the edges. weird.

mduell · Dec 21, 2005, 10:30 AM

Originally Posted by Darthmaul4114

i tried it at a bunch of different resolutions and none of them worked properly. i think the 1920x1080 display put the desktop like in the middle of the screen and tiled my wallpaper. kind of hard to explain but it was weird

*edit* i was wrong. it just does the same thing as when i have it on 1280x720, it looks great, just the edges are cut off again. on taking a screen cap and opening it in preview, it showed that the whole screen was working, but i just cant see the edges. weird.

Check the menus/settings on the TV itsself; many have zoom options (often multiple levels) to scale up smaller pictures to full screeen. You need to turn that off (set it to "normal" or "widescreen" or similar).

power142 · Dec 21, 2005, 12:54 PM

Nice TV

You might like to take a look in the Rear Projection section at the AVS Forum as there a number of people discussing connecting this set up to a computer. IIRC, the VGA input is resolution restricted for some peculiar reason, but I believe you can get native 1920x1080 if you use the HDMI input - you just need either an HDMI or DVI cable and a DVI->HDMI adapter.

You should probably expect some overscan (clipping of the edges) of any image you send to the TV - this is pretty much the norm rather than the exception.

Darthmaul4114 · Dec 21, 2005, 11:07 PM

Originally Posted by power142

Nice TV

You might like to take a look in the Rear Projection section at the AVS Forum as there a number of people discussing connecting this set up to a computer. IIRC, the VGA input is resolution restricted for some peculiar reason, but I believe you can get native 1920x1080 if you use the HDMI input - you just need either an HDMI or DVI cable and a DVI->HDMI adapter.

You should probably expect some overscan (clipping of the edges) of any image you send to the TV - this is pretty much the norm rather than the exception.

thanks i'll check out that forum. our tv doesn't have VGA, it has DVI, so i'm just going straight from DVI on the Powerbook to DVI on the TV. i know it would have some clipping of the edges, but its clipping off the whole top menu bar, about 3/4 of the dock, and the same distance or so on each side (i think i can see the left half of the icons on the right side.

tooki · Dec 22, 2005, 01:40 PM

That's called "overscan", and it's quite normal on TVs (on standard NTSC, 15% is the usual crop amount). See if the TV has an option to turn overscan off.

tooki

power142 · Dec 23, 2005, 12:26 PM

Also, you may be able to tweak the display mode settings using SwitchResX, but don't be horrified if you can't completely eliminate overscan.

tooki · Dec 23, 2005, 03:19 PM

If it's DVI, as I believe is the case, there's no setting you can make that could alter how the display handles overscan. In a digital display, it is strictly up to the display to determine overscan. (BTW, overscan is only relevant to CRTs.)

took

power142 · Dec 24, 2005, 02:45 PM

I was curious, so I read around a little... apparently, most rear-projection sets are overscanned from the factory such that some pixels never make it past the light engine (in digital sets) to the screen.

This shouldn't prevent you from getting a 1:1 pixel mapping, but just bear in mind that there are some pixels that you will never see.