1920x1080 over HDMI to 32" TV output issues

[jonny162]

Hello,

I built an HTPC a year or so ago with help from this forum and it's been running beautifully - thanks to those that helped me out! I recently bought a 32" Samsung LED TV and have been outputting through VGA to this at 1920x1080 without any issues. I bought a cheap HDMI cable thinking this would improve my image quality (and free up a VGA cable for another monitor) but can't get the max 1080p resolution to fit on the screen. I've googled this and tried playing around with my TV and HTPC resolution/screen settings but with no luck. I either get a bad aspect ratio or the image doesn't fit on the screen.

I'm have an Asus P5Q-EM motherboard and I'm feeling that my next step would be to buy a quiet, low temperature graphics card such as the GT240 or HD5570. This would also let me play some basic games which would be an added bonus!

A couple of questions:

1. Does anyone have any idea why I might be having the issues with my TV over HDMI?
2. Any recommendations for graphics cards that would suit my needs, or whether the GT240 or HD5570 are any good?

Thanks in advance!

Jonny

[danimal]

i've made 1080p fit perfectly with two different computers, on several different tv's, but it wasn't intuitive.

sometimes you have to do the tweaking on the monitor, and sometimes you have to tweak the video card... for instance, last time it was a monitor setting called "just scan", i think, instead of putting the monitor at 1080p.

you left out important info, like what video card you have, but amd video cards have a tweakable scaling option that will make anything fit.

[jonny162]

Hey thanks for the reply. At the moment I don't have a graphics card, I'm using the on-board graphics from the motherboard which has an HDMI connection...

Cheers

[quest_for_silence]

At the moment I don't have a graphics card, I'm using the on-board graphics

The on-board graphics (aka IGP) *IS* a graphics card: which one do you have?

[nutball]

Somewhere in the menu of the TV you should find a setting that says 'Just Scan', which sets up 1:1 pixel mapping under HDMI or DVI. On my Samsung set this is under Picture Setttings -> Size -> there are a list of aspect ratios eg. 16:9, 4:3 and so on, and at the bottom of the list 'Just Scan'.

[faugusztin]

Your TV has overscan enabled. For example in my LG LCD TV, i have two inputs - one as pure HDMI (with all the stupid effects TV has for this) and the second one is labeled HDMI (DVI) - which is a pure input, without overscan, without color changes, simply 1:1 copy of the input.

So pull out the manual of your TV and search for overscan or for what nutball said.

PS: There are no LED TV's on market. What you call LED TV is a simple stupid LCD TV with LED backlight.

[jonny162]

The on-board graphics (aka IGP) *IS* a graphics card: which one do you have?

My motherboard is an Asus P5Q-EM so I guess the graphics card is whatever that comes with? Do you know whether the graphics cards I suggested are any good?

I'll have a look at the Just Scan options, thanks for the suggestions!