Why is a PC connected to HDMI different?

(2012-05-29 07:38)DJ_Izumi Wrote:  

(2012-05-29 07:32)poofyhairguy Wrote:  And in the future ALWAYS pay the extra for a full 1080p TV. Only 1080p TVs can have a setting to really work like a monitor and just be a big pixel perfect panel. In fact in HTPCland that matter more than ANYTHING else (like LCD vs Plasma, 60hz vs 240hz, etc.).

I don't think that's necessarily true, I think it varies model by model. I have a 32" '720p' TV that actually has a native resolution of 1360x768. I have no issue hooking up either my laptop or XBMC machine to it, it seeing it as a 1360x768 HDMI display, and drawing a 1:1 pixel perfect image on the display. Works great. It's a cheap Dynex brand no less.

Many 720p TVs are really 1360x768. Heck that is what my mentioned "720p" TV thinks it is when I use the VGA port.

The problem is that 1360x768 resolution. Video is mostly either 1080p or 720p. So either you scale content down to a weird resolution, or you scale it up to a weird resolution. Cropping is only part of the issue with 720p TVs, the real issue is I haven't met one that is really 720p. Heck some plasmas are 1024x768. All terrible.

Scaling is bad in most cases and should be avoided. When it can't be avoided, natural scaling is better (so like 720p to 1080p).

That is why I think 1080p matters so much for a HTPC. You can get an output is that basically the original content as it was intended.

Heck, that is why you do a HTPC. If you just want the chopped and scaled image the average consumer expects many Blu Ray players will do that job better!

Hi all, I tried some things and had success.

First, editing the name of the HDMI port to "PC" did absolutely nothing.

Second, connecting with a VGA cable made the boot up screen perfect and was able to see the bios setting screens without everything being scrambled. BUT, Windows was a lot worse off, 40% of the screen was cut off and was impossible to use, which was odd since I thought it would support a PC.

And third, back to HDMI. This is where i had success. Thank you for encouraging me to continue trying. I continued playing around with that Intel graphic settings panel, and you know that custom aspect ratio option some of you posted about, I was finally able to get that option when I set the resolution to this: 1280x720. I adjusted both the horizontal and vertical to a setting of 50, and guess what, the entire desktop shows without any portion cut off. I hope this info will be useful to people out there with older Samsung TV's.

The desktop doesn't look as sharp that's probably because it's not the optimum resolution specified in the manual (1360x768), but hey, at least nothing is cut off. And here's the best part. I installed XBMC, nothing is cut off either, and everything does look sharp and navigates smoothly. I quickly played a video and the quality was excellent. I think for a TV this size you can't really distinguish HD anyway.

One possible issue I noticed is that when the video fades out to black, the screen becomes a bit green, I'm not sure if it's a problem with the video source or my equipment I didn't have time to try another video, but nevertheless, even if I can't fix this it's not really that big of a deal to me.

Btw, out of curiosity, why does my TV need a resolution of 1280x720 or 1360x768, shouldn't a 1080i TV regardless of "p" have a resolution of x1080? I can adjust the setting to a resolution of x1080 but everything on the desktop is way too tiny. I ran XBMC on this setting and couldn't tell any difference in XBMC or the video as it was on 1280x720.