I've had a Sharp DT-400 hooked up via S-Video to my DVD player for most of the year. This week I decided I wanted to hook it up via DVI to my laptop. The intention is to play games but I also wanted to see if DVD's looked any better as well. The laptop instantly recognized a second monitor at 1280 X 720 resolution, the nVidia screen software recognises it as a 720p HDTV device, and my desktop background shows up pefectly cropped on the projector screen.

Now for the actual problem.

When I play a DVD, either with Cyberlink 5 or Intervideo 4, the image only fills the top left 3/4s of the screen.

I fiddled with my settings and forced the nVidia to 720i instead of 720p. Yay! The image is exactly where it supposed to be! But the projector first displays "800 X 600" in the upper corner which suggests I'm not getting the full resolution.

I'm sure I just need to tinker with the settings, but I'm not sure if this is how it's supposed to be or what I should be attempting. My long term goal is to buy a Blu Ray Drive for my laptop and get the full 1280X720 resolution.

Am I done or is there more I can tinker with to try and get everything to display correctly? Any suggestions?

I'd check the list of supported resolutions in Display Properties, and if 1280X720 shows up, you may need to manually select it. However, if your laptop isn't a widescreen model, the card may be limited to 4:3 formats (just because the card reports seeing a 720p display doesn't necessarily mean it will send the display 720p). If this is the case, a 3rd party solution such as PowerStrip may be necessary to allow custom resolutions from your card.

Your best bet to get more replies is to ask this question in the HTPC area, since it really isn't calibration-related.

Go to the NVidia control panel, select Flat Panel Scaling, Click the display that corresponds to your Sharp display, and the click the Let My Display do the Scaling (or something like that).