Questions on HTPC and TV choice

blue4ice

blue4ice

blue4ice

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11 Nov 2007
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Over the weekend I decided to have a dabble in connecting my PC to the TV with view to building a dedicated HTPC. The TV I have is a fairly basic model (it came with the flat lol) and is a 42" Hitachi Plasma HD Ready (i.e. 1080i not 1080p). It has a HDMI connection and a D-Sub PC connection. All the files were ripped from DVD to my PC using DVDshrink and are being played back as .vob using VideoLAN.

Firstly I used my laptop to connect to the TV using VGA to VGA D sub cable. According to the manual the max res on the PC input is 1280 x 1024. However I used 1280 x 768 (I think) and the picture was ok. A little washed out compared to a DVD player connected via component but ok.

I then tried my desktop PC (x1950pro) using the DVI to VGA convertor and then connecting into the VGA Dsub on the TV. The picture was a tad bit better but still not as vibrant as the DVD player via component. The DVD player has like a gloss finish to it whereas the PC is a bit like matt/silk if that makes sense.

My questions are: -
1. Is the max res of the screen in PC mode good enough to get a good picture from a HTPC? The actual icon text looked a bit fuzzy
2. Would I get a better picture getting a DVI to HDMI convertor and going into the TV via the HDMI socket? (I appreciate that the actual TV could be better using HDMI rather than VGA Dsub or Visa versa)

Thanks for the help
 
Firstly, what model is your TV. This will let us find out exactly what your TV can handle.

What we'll then want to do is set your PC to output the exact resolution of the panel. Once the output from the PC matches the number of pixels, it should look much better :)
 
Powerstrip may well be of use, so you can set the PC to output a special resolution of 1024x1024 for you, which should look fine. However the PC will assume this to be square aspect so you'll need to tell it that you want that resolution to be 16:9 aspect, despite not being a 16:9 resolution. I'm not sure how to do the second part but powerstrip should let you get the resolution exact, as that's what is causing blurriness.
 
I have installed powerstrip and from a bit of fiddling I have made a custom resolution of 1024x1024 although when using this the TV reports back that it is set at 1280x1024 and the image looks exactly the same as if I am running that res.Any ideas where I am going wrong?
 
According to the table on P25, it's not a supported resolution via VGA - which could well be why it's picking it up incorrectly. I'd be tempted to try 1280x1024 - I have found with the small 7", 800x480 screen in my car that it's less noticeable when squashing the vertical resolution down, than squashing the horizontal resolution down - I run my 7" @ 800x600 because it's clearest out of all the options.
 
yeah i did give that a go but the text was a little more blury than the 1024 x 768 so I think I will stick with that for the time. I am tempted to try it via HDMI to see if its any different although will need to buy an adaptor and cable for this.
 
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