Hi there,

I haven't seen this answer anywhere online, and need to resolve it fairly soon...so I can do returns if needed:

I bought a Westinghouse 42" LCD TV a week or so back. I love it. But, I do have a problem...
right now, I'm running all my sources (Macbook Pro, Xbox360, and PC) all through VGA ... which goes to a VGA switchbox ... which then goes to the TV.
Picture shows up just fine, and looks nice. But, it is not "widescreen", in the case of the Mac and the PC at least -- the XBOX displays fine. The Mac and PC, however, look squished. I confirmed that the res is 1920x1080 @ 60hz, and it indeed is...it just doesn't look like that on the screen. There is no "stretch" option on the TV for the PC input, and really, there shouldn't need to be -- it should display correctly as far as I can tell.

The caveat is that...if I plug the mac directly into the TV via VGA -- it displays fine: it is only when I go through the switchbox (which does boost the signal) that it goes funky.

Any suggestions on this? I am thinking maybe there is just some option/switch that needs to be checked off in the OS. Maybe the switchbox is changing the signal in some way that is making it unusable -- however, if that were the case, the xbox360 would not work -- and it works just fine.

I would love to have everything hooked up "one way", but if it's not going to work and I need to return anything (switch box, cables, etc...), I should not wait too overly long. Please let me know -- and thank you!!!

John

Different switch box or HDMI. If it is the switch that introduces the issue then there is probably very little that you can do to fix it.

yeah, that's what I had figured...but had wanted to check with you geniuses first. ;)
Thankfully, the company I ordered everything through (PCCABLES.COM) are very customer friendly, and are allowing me to return the switchbox & all the cables, and are even paying for the return shipping, which I thought was quite nice.

I think I'll be going the HDMI route with the my Mac...actually, I'm hooked into my TV through HDMI right now, typing away. As far as the rest of the connections, well...that's still a bit up in the air. I suppose I'll continue to use the VGA connection for the 360, since it seems to work just fine. Would have liked to use HDMI, but it seems only the 360 Elite has the HDMI port. I'm assuming that VGA will give an equally good signal as component?

And, lastly...as far as my older PC goes, well...I suppose I'm out of luck there. Well, actually I think I could use another DVI-to-HDMI cable to connect it that way...hmmm, I think that's what I'm going to do, actually. :)

All in all, not as quite of a "convenient" solution -- but a working solution nonetheless!

Thanks for your input...and if you have any thoughts on the rest of the connections, do please let me know!

John