[scoilt]

I just purchased a Dell Studio Slim for use as an HTPC. I have an ATI Radeon HD 4350 512MB attached to my Viewsonic HD LCD TV (can't remember the model number) via HDMI. My TV appears to only support certain resolutions over HDMI (1920x1080, 1366x768, etc.). The TV will display other resolutions (800x600, 1024x768, etc.) but the screen will be completely magenta and shades of magenta.

Here's my question:

Is there a way to force older Windows programs (games) to run at a certain resolution not supported by that program? Some way to force hardware scaling? The problem is that older games will force the screen resolution to an unsupported resolution on the TV. Alternately, is there a way to force a full screen program to run in a window then?

Alternately, what about being able to resize a window when a program does support running in windowed mode?

Hacks, programs, etc. would be great.

I can run a 25 year old DOS game in DOSBOX and apply hardware scaling to display the game at 1080P, but I can't get a five year old Windows game to run (unless I want the screen to be an unreadable magenta - possibly damaging the TV? - or in a window that is way too small to view on a TV...


Thanks.

 

[Bigbird999]

Does your TV have a vga port. If so it will support pc resolutions. Post Model# or link to your TV.



BB

 

[scoilt]

It's a Viewsonic N4251w. Yeah, it has a VGA connector, but the way my cables are run, I'm trying to keep with the HDMI as it's got my audio with it. (Trying to minimize cables and not have to run more)

 

[walford]

Since your TV has a native resolution of 1366x768 that is the resolution you want to send it over HDMI. Your PC desktop should also be set to 1360 or 1366x768.

Your graphics card will take care of the scaling from all your applications for output at 1366x768.

You don't want to send it anything else since then the TV has to rescale what it receives to 1366x768 and as you have found sendting this causes all other sorts of picture problems.

 

[scoilt]

Right, but it's when opening older programs that force the screen resolution to change that's causing the problem.

Some programs run natively at 800X600 or 640X480 or what ever and don't support the resolutions that the TV supports over HDMI. The programs also (as far as I can figure out) don't support running in windowed mode. Being able to force a program to run in windowed mode would at least make it usable, even if the window would be quite small (a 800X600 window on at 1920X1080 or 1366X768 desktop).

Is there a way for force a program to open in a window as opposed to full screen (when the program itself doesn't give you the option to under its settings or video options)?

 

[Bigbird999]

It depends on what your tv supports. Over HDMI, some TVs support only standard HD resolutions (720 and 1080) so they overscan and the computer desktop looks crappy. If this is the case you will need to use VGA to get 1:1 mapping, because the VGA input will support a computer resolution = native resolution.


With HDMI, try setting your video card to 1360x768 and looking in the tv settings for a "dot for dot" or "just scan" setting which will tell your TV not to scale the image. If it has this setting for the HDMI inputs then you should get 1:1. If not, then use VGA.


BB

 

[Nosferax]

You can't force older game to use another resolution because those graphic settings are hardcoded in the program itself. Game built on an engine like the Quake engine or the Unreal engine can be set to arbitrary resolution by using the console mode and changing the value of a couple of settings but for older game you are SOL.


You may want to check the game publisher site. Sometime, for popular titles, they release patches that gives you more video resolution option but it is a rare event.

 

[scoilt]

That's what I figured. Thanks.