display overscan problem, HDMI to a 40" Samsung HDTV

Friend of mine has a Samsung 40" 1080p TV. Currently he has a standard VGA cable connecting the PC to the TV, so while it works it is a bit soft looking. He got a DVI/HDMI cable (his 8800GS doesn't have HDMI out except via DVI/HDMI adapter) but when he does this, it overscans on the TV. Also all the text looks like utter crap because it isn't doing proper 1x1 pixel mapping.

On a box I set up with an ATI card recently, it was doing the opposite and underscanning, but in the CCC there was an adjustment to correct that. After the correction, it was beautiful. But no matter how much I looked, the nvidia control panel on my friend's computer doesn't have anything like that at all.

Am I just missing something? Or is his card or drivers crap for HDMI output to a TV?

He has an 8400GS with 196.21 drivers running Windows 7. Yes, they're old drivers, I want to update them, but haven't gotten there yet as he's busy with work and the VGA works for now. Google searches showed that a lot of people had issues like this with newer drivers too, but nothing conclusive as to any fixes.

Pretty messed up when the analog VGA looks better than the digital HDMI :(

I recently built a kickass HTPC with the brand spanky new GT520 fanless ASUS card. Guess what - massive overscanning issues with my 61" DLP. NO way to fix it in the drivers at all.
Solution? Bought an ATi card and used the CCC control. During my many painful hours of research, I quickly found many, many people complaining about this on the nVidia forums and elsewhere - nVidia has no plans to change their drivers.

This was my first ATi card purchase in like 10 years, haha.

with a high end tv or anything thats 1080p u should be able to change the overscan settings on the tv.

try making a custom resolution for 1862x1047 or 1855x1043 or 1745x1028, that should cover all of the overscan settings that u could need, i think that NV lets u do that easily still and should take care of the overscan. or if u get the model of the tv u should beable to find its real native resolution or call samsung.

and dsub is better than hdmi or dvi-d as it has native color mapping and no frame sync commands so it can be processed line by line.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zanzabar

with a high end tv or anything thats 1080p u should be able to change the overscan settings on the tv.

try making a custom resolution for 1862x1047 or 1855x1043 or 1745x1028, that should cover all of the overscan settings that u could need, i think that NV lets u do that easily still and should take care of the overscan. or if u get the model of the tv u should beable to find its real native resolution or call samsung.

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Well yeah, that goofy custom resolution works, but the pixels are still not mapped 1/1 since it is stretching to 1920x1080 so it still looks like crapola.

Sounding more and more like he either needs to stick with VGA, or get an ATI card to do HDMI with.

I can't believe that nvidia would be so stupid as to not fix this... Guess I know to NEVER recommend nvidia for anyone doing an HTPC connecting via HDMI to a HDTV. Geez.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sparky

Well yeah, that goofy custom resolution works, but the pixels are still not mapped 1/1 since it is stretching to 1920x1080 so it still looks like crapola.

Sounding more and more like he either needs to stick with VGA, or get an ATI card to do HDMI with.

I can't believe that nvidia would be so stupid as to not fix this... Guess I know to NEVER recommend nvidia for anyone doing an HTPC connecting via HDMI to a HDTV. Geez.

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if u cannot disable overscan then its not a 1920x1080 panel, it is a 1080p panel and that means that it can display 1080p with overscan in 1:1. thats one of the crafty things that samsung and sony do so i will not buy from them and only do panasonic and lg and sharp

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zanzabar

if u cannot disable overscan then its not a 1920x1080 panel, it is a 1080p panel and that means that it can display 1080p with overscan in 1:1. thats one of the crafty things that samsung and sony do so i will not buy from them and only do panasonic and lg and sharp

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1080p is 1920x1080, is it not? So sending that res to it should work, shouldn't it?

FWIW the vizio TV I set up for someone recently was fine. That PC had an ATI card and it worked perfectly :/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sparky

1080p is 1920x1080, is it not? So sending that res to it should work, shouldn't it?

FWIW the vizio TV I set up for someone recently was fine. That PC had an ATI card and it worked perfectly :/

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what ati is doing is changing the rez to a custom one by adjusting the overscan value (padding on the frame, what its essentially doing is making a custom resolution that has less than 1920x1080. and if u have no control over the aspect ratio/pixel mapping with overscan its not 1920x1080, its like with 720p how u can get 1280x70 or 1024x720 but they are both 720p and 16:9 on the panel then with 720p if u can not see the white flashing dots on the top its 703/4p well this is the same with 1080p and its only the resolution as quality 1080p broadcast and that is 1745x1028 give or take a line

if u look at the wiki for overscan u will see this pic http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...n_examples.svg and it has 3 spaces on it and a 1080p set can work to map 1:1 on any of the 3 and a good set will be 1920x1080 but some companies, especially ones with mva/pva panels from samsung will have tile or action safe resolutions and not the whole thing. its messed up but its there.

or your just missing the setting on the tv

Try this? http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...8&postcount=16

I cant remember what I did to get my GTX480 to use my full panel either now lol..