[Vash]

For some reason when I hook up my 1ghz TiBook to a Pioneer 43" HDTV Plasma the image is extremely stretched vertically. In the Display System Preferences the TiBook seems the think the T.V. has a far wider aspect ratio than it actually does, as that is what it looks like in the arrangement section of the Preferences. Because the T.V. can not change the format of the image, it just stretches all resolutions to fit. For example, the highest resolution (1920x540) should be 1920x1080 but instead of putting black bars on top and bottom the TV just stretches the image. Is there any way to force the computer to change the aspect ratio it outputs through its DVI port? The TiBook is plugged into the TV through a DVI to HDMI wire.

[Ken_F2]

What content are you trying to display? I don't quite understand why you are using 1920x540p when your panel is probably just 1280x720p or 1024x576p. If you are using DVI, you should probably set your Mac to output the native resolution of the panel.

If you've somehow managed to save HDTV content on your mac and want to play it back...Televisions with an auto-letterbox mode for HDTV generally only add the bars upon detection of a 33.75khz input signal. On a PC, one can use a utility like Powerstrip to set video timings that correctly match the signal the display is looking for, but that may not be possible on Mac.

In that case, I would [again] recommend that you just set your mac to output the native resolution of the panel (you didn't say what Pioneer model you had so I can't help you there) and let your Mac do the downconversion.

[Vash]

The resolutions listed were 1920x540, some other weird extra widescreen one, 800x600, and 640x480. The TV is a Pioneer PDP-5040 HD. I tried all the resolutions, and the 4:3 ones covered the screen from top to bottom, but it was so vertically stretched that the image only covered about 30% of the width of the TV. And yes I do have some HDTV content on my Macintosh that I would like to play. Oh, and you don't plug the HDMI wire into the TV, but into a Receiver/Converter that came with the TV that decodes all the signals for the TV to display.

[Ken_F2]

I did a quick search. The Pioneer has 1280x768 native resolution. Anything else is just scaled/zoomed/interpolated, like on a LCD. Do you have an option for 1280x768 on the Mac?

If 1280x768 isn't a choice, is there a 1280x720?

[Vash]

The only other choice offered was 896x600 only 6 pixels taller than 800x600, pretty pointless. Weird that the powerbook won't give me 1280x720.

[Ken_F2]

Is there any way to edit the listing of available resolutions under OSX?

[Vash]

Not that I know of.
edit: I searched VersionTracker, there were 3 programs, one command line based. None of them would co-operate. One forced you to register and pay money to use a resolution higher than 1024x768, and the other 2 just wouldn't do it and had errors.

[badtz]

1280x768

assuming that one can set the output to that resolution, does that mean that the pioneer plasma tv [or any plasma tv that also has that native resolution] should display the image perfectly with no stretching?

[bmedina]

Have you tried DisplayConfigX?