I was debating posting this in the HTPC forum, but decided this might be a better place. I recently purchased a TC-P42X1 and built a HTPC to use with it via HDMI. The TV is 720p so I was expecting to use a resolution like 1024x768, however, when I open the NVIDIA Control Panel and select "Change flat panel scaling," it tells me my TV's native resolution is 1920x1080. I'm not sure why it's saying my TV is 1080p, but I chose that resolution as my output and used NVIDIA's tool to resize the HDTV desktop since a bit was cut off around the edges. After setting this up, I haven't seen any problems. Does anyone know why the NVIDIA control is telling me my TV's native resolution is 1080p? Am I really displaying the 1080p output or is it somehow being scaled down to 720p? Thanks for the help!

greetings

1024x768 panels don't convert anything to 720p. They convert it to the panel resolution.

regards

I'm sorry, could you please explain your statement in a bit more detail? I'm afriad I don't follow you.

Greetings

720p is 1280x720 ... for a pixel array.

921600 pixels.

1024x768 = 786432 pixels.

So where does the TV first turn a 1080 signal into a 720 signal ... and then into one that actually fits its own panel? You say your TV is a 720p TV ... why is that? Your TV is neither 720 nor 1080.

In all cases ... the TV gets an HD signal ... and throws out information until the remaining fit the panel. You can't squeeze 921,600 pixels into 786,432 pixels no matter how hard you try. Like you can't put 7 gallons of water into a 5 gallon container.

regards

The panel has a particular number of pixels that it displays exactly. So if the panel has 768 lines, with a 720 line signal, it will expand to use all 768 pixels. If the source signal is 1080 lines, it will reduce it to 768.

I have a three year old Samsung that is a 1024x768 pixel panel, and it uses 768 for displaying PC images. It accepts 720p or 1080i video from a DVD player, but converts each to fit its 768 line screen. In my case, the nVidia driver under Vista recognizes the screen as 768 and chooses a 1360x768 resolution.

I can only guess why yours would choose 1080 if it is really a 768 line panel. Perhaps because you are using an HDMI connection. It would not surprise me if HDMI does not include 768 in its list of resolutions, so your set, given a choice of reporting 720 or 1080 chooses 1080 because it can do better than 720. On my laptop, I am using a DVI-to-VGA connection and VGA supports 768 just fine.

P.S. I looked in the HDMI 1.3 spec and 768 is not listed as one of the supported formats.

So ideally I should find the resolution of the TV screen (I believe it's 1024x768) and use that resolution as the output of my HTPC? Currently I'm putting out 1080p, but if I understand your comments correctly my TV is scaling it down to 1024x768 anyway so my PC is doing more work than it needs to.

I do see a difference in the general appearance when I turn up the resolution though - all the windows, text, icons, etc look magnified at lower resolutions. I don't completely understand why this difference remains in effect if it's getting scaled back to 1024x768 anyway...

Greetings

It's not the PC that is doing more work ... it's the TV. The TV has to decide what to throw out or keep.

Just because some TVs use 1024x768 panels ... does not mean that they will accept a native signal of this type. Beware.

regards

I also have the TC-P42X1 but have a question about sizing and centering my display.

I have my computer connected to the panel via a DVI-HDMI cable. There is a thin black space "framing" the display from my computer on the plasma TV.

I am using 1920x1080 as the resolution. I have tried every resolution on the list and they all leave a border. How can I fix this? Is there a way to resize the screen to fit? I have also tried all of the settings offered by the television like fill, zoom, h-fill, just, etc.

Thanks for your help.

I also have the TC-P42X1 but have a question about sizing and centering my display.

I have my computer connected to the panel via a DVI-HDMI cable. There is a thin black space "framing" the display from my computer on the plasma TV.

I am using 1920x1080 as the resolution. I have tried every resolution on the list and they all leave a border. How can I fix this? Is there a way to resize the screen to fit? I have also tried all of the settings offered by the television like fill, zoom, h-fill, just, etc.

Thanks for your help.

what graphics card are you using?

sounds like you need to turn some scaling off in your video driver.

Let me add since the native resolution of the panel is 1024x768, it will never look good for computer use.

Computers only use square pixels so 1024x768 must be a 4:3(256x4, 256x3) in order to look correct. Since the pixels on the TV are rectangles you're going to end up with something that looks sort of fuzzy. Should it be 720p, 1080i or 1080p? It's likely a question you'd have to be infront of the TV to answer.

I'm just using the integrated ATI Radeon 3100 that came with my desktop. The picture actually looks amazing, it just looks like it needs to be stretched in all directions about an eighth of an inch to match the edges of the image with the edges of the screen (in my non-technical verbage).

I'm just using the integrated ATI Radeon 3100 that came with my desktop. The picture actually looks amazing, it just looks like it needs to be stretched in all directions about an eighth of an inch to match the edges of the image with the edges of the screen (in my non-technical verbage).

check the options in your catalyst control center. ATI does some sort of overscan comensation that shrinks the desktop in like an inch. Unforutnetly it's not an easy control to access, it's somewhere like

Thanks! This did the job perfectly. The overscan setting is definitely well hidden. :)