Since when is 1920x1080 a relative term? (LCD/ATI/nVidia issue)

I read some FAQs and searched around and havent found an answer. Apologies in advance if I just suck at searching.

Background- I have a nice PC in my bedroom with a 9800GT going to a cheap 37" Westinghouse LCD thru DVI and its frikkin perfect. Everything on it looks great, except for the fact that its not a great LCD with crappy contrast ratio, etc.

-SO- I bought a place and decided HTPC and Samsung LCD was the way to go in my Living room. I bought the parts, I built it and I got it all set up in my living room and couldnt wait to see what it would look like. I was excited cause it works so great on my westinghouse.

The mobo I got was a Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H Micro ATX. It has HDMI out and supports sound and video using integrated ATI Radeon video. (Im running win7 enterprise) My Television is a Samsung UN46B8000 LED-LCD (1080p obviously).

So I plug it all in and there are black bars not only on the top of the screen but also on the sides. After consulting Mr. Google, this appears to be a ATI driver issue and there is not a fix for it. Also the text looks like crap. Way better on my westinghouse LCD. The pixelated text is annoying as sin but win7 has a cool custom text size thing that helped a lot. Im still mad that a LCD that cost 4x what my westinghouse one did look so (relatively) awful when a computer gets plugged in. In addition to my rez and clarity woes, there is a judder every 2-3 minutes where it cant quite keep up with 1080p MKV files. It looks like frames are dropping like mad, it lasts about 6 seconds, and it is consistently there every few minutes. Infuriating thing really, pulls you right out of the movie.

Between the rez and the judder, I figure i should have never been lazy and cheap and tried integrated video. In a bit of a rush, I got a 9500GT with the little DVI-HDMI adapter. I installed it yesterday, got it to boot and -epic sigh- 1920x1080 is too BIG for my display. WTF. So ATI is too small and nVidia is too big? Is 1920x1080 not a standard resolution? Why in the HELL do both of my video cards and my TV all have a different idea of what this res is? If anyone can offer me and helpful advice, or a card that is guaranteed to display correctly on my Samsung LED i would love you forever. HALP.



ps- my nvidia card managed to break my sound also, so a card with goood HDMI sound would be cool too, but not the main problem, sound's generally easy to fix.

Hmm, I may go do that. Tho I played around with some settings for 16:9, widescreen 4:3 etc and that all did nothing... I didnt see a setting for overscan tho, I can go check.

I owe you a beer.

Yeah Win7 grabbed a driver automatically and it didnt have CCC. I went out to ATIs site, grabbed the right driver and bam. I feel like an idiot, I'm not some total noob when it comes to this stuff and that sure makes me feel like one.


As far as the judder:


I like the 240hz... its one of the reasons I bought the set that I did.

Its fine for minutes at a time, then it goes stupid. It def feels like a process in the background is causing it. I will run with task manager open and see if something is stealing CPU every few minutes... Any PC based suggestions to fix the judder? Im pretty sure the TV is fine, it doesnt appear to have any problems at all... =\\



you guys are my heroes, seriously. What a helpful forum.

The screen judder I was mentioning before, here are some interesting details.

every 3 minutes exactly on the second and lasts 6.5 seconds, then the movie picks back up as smooth as glass for another 2:54... I changed the indexing process to low priority and havent tested yet... what on earth could be causing that... I have a brand new clean win7 OS with nothing but firefox, avg, core avc and mega k-lite... why would my computer flip out for 6 seconds every three minutes? Im soooo close to having my dream setup her, sigh.

Alright Ill give it a shot but I guess Im one of the few who really likes that weird-almost-too-real look that the 240hz leds do. Once you watch enough that the smoothness or clarity isnt distracting its really quite cool. Anyway Ill have some more time to play with it this evening..

oh and to whoever said it should be artificating.. it does, usually for a bit after the stutter then it clears up. -_-

I turned off the 240hz and the picture looked nothing like what I bought that TV for =\\ call me a noob or whatever but the crystal clarity and smoothness just disappeared when i turned it off.

however, putting the 240hz setting to 'smooth' from standard took the stutter from ~6 second to closer to ~2 seconds and it still looks good. Im both disappointed and pleased that the problem is in the TV and not the video card. I will find a way to fix it permanently. Further suggestions however, will be much appreciated.

-Media player classic with mega k-lite and core avc pro
-1080p mkvs keep my AMD Phenom II Black fluctuating around 35-45%
-the content is on a 4TB NAS thru a gigabit switch


Nope it all runs thru a HTPC, no blu ray player except the internal optical drive, which I have not yet tested (im not big on discs, lol)



okay, Im at work now, itll have to wait till later tonight..


.

forgive my ignorance but lolwut?



Thanks for all the posts so far, you guys rock!

ps- can someone shoot me a link for a discussion on getting my realtek hdmi out to send the 5.1 audio that I know is encoded in the majority of these files I have? it only sends two channel stereo and I would really like to get that working. I dont know where to start troubleshootign and I dont wanna start another thread. I figure now that some smart people are already subscribed to this one I should ask here. I cant be the first one to ask this question... tia

thanks for the suggestions, as soon as I get home from work Ill get started and try some stuff out! I really appreciate it

AH HA! Success!

The judder problem was happening for 5 seconds every three minutes. I couldnt for the life of me figure out wtf was going on. That is until my friend saw my PC and went WOW THE BACKGROUND CHANGES AUTOMATICALLY? (win7) And I went yeah, I set it to change...every...three.. minutes.... OMG. I'm an idiot. I should have thought of this ages ago, I just didnt think that a picture changing could use so much processor that it would judder my video for 6 seconds straight, I got a nice dual core proc =\\ . Anyway - I changed the desktop and voila! no more judder, just some basic artifacting that I will try to fix. So now I am on to the challenge of trying to output 5.1 audio. Any basic FAQs or links?

I have a Sony ht-is100 receiver/sub combo with HDMI and fiber connections. Im currently running audio and video over HDMI to the receiver from the pc. It says 2.0 Channel on the receiver even when Im running mkvs thats I know are encoded to have 5.1 audio. Its like the soundcard isnt putting out the right format. I have the realtek HDMI audio driver and Im just not sure where to look to fix this. I could probably troubleshoot it but Im short on time these days and if anyone has suggestions I'd love to hear em. It might be a simple setting somewhere in MPC or the Realtek control panel but I cant find it for the life of me.


tia