HTPC with the KDS-55A2000 SXRD

[cheeky_chappie]

Hi guys.


To start with, I wanna say a big thanks to the guys on here for all the support and info thats on this forum. Without this I wouldnt have a wonderful 55incher which i managed to nab from JL afew months back at the bargain price of 1K. So happy with it that even my brother bought himself one too. A truly outstanding bit of kit and agree with Tarbat that even to this day the tv gives me a big grin on my face.

The 70 incher thats on special offer at the min is very tempting too but thats a whole another story..

Anyways.. back to my main prob which i hope some kind gent on here can help me with.

I've recently delved into HTPC and built myself the following :-
Intel E4500 2.2GHz
Powercolor 512MB ATI HD 2600 Pro SCS3
Gigabyte P35C - DS3R
2GB Geil Black Dragon Ram
500 GB Samsung Spinpoint

(will soon add the LD Bluray and HD DVD combo drive).

My aim is to be able to play everything (if not most) files/discs in glorious 1080P.

I have hooked it up to my SXRD55 via a DVI-HDMI cable running at a resolution of 1920x1080 @ 60HZ

The problem I am having is that the picture from the HTPC does not fill the screen. There is ( about an inch thick ) black border around the edge of desktop( looks like the picture is smaller than the screen). Having read other threads on this forum, I presumed I would be getting overscan (again, i presumed this is when picture is chopped off around the side, eg the picture bigger than the screen).

How can I adjust it to fill the screen? I have downloaded the latest ATI Drivers and Powerstrip but cannot find ways to change it.

What settings do you guys use with your HTPC and SXRDs use? What is the refresh rate that you are inputting into the tv? is it 60 Hz like mine?

Not sure if this makes any difference. I had no borders when I plugged in my PS3 on the other HDMI port.

Many thanks in advance for your help..

 

[cheeky_chappie]

Hi again.

Okay after a bit of playing about.. Ive managed to switch the refresh to 50Hz. This has now given me the overscan problem (looks like picture bigger than the screen).

Whats the best way to deal with this? Is it via the Engineers Menu on the tv?

Also, I read about the Blur ray HD/dvd judder that these tvs can have with certain devices. And this can be fixed by forcing the HTPC to use 48Hz (or something like that). Can someone clarify this? and let us know what i need to do?

Thanks again.

 

[AndyCob]

Well I hope this doesn't come as to much of a downer but you can't get rid of the overscan and maintain a 1x1 pixel map of 1080 video.

The overscan in an rptv is optical, its a physical feature of the positioning of the optics and the screen and no means of adjustment is provided short of dsiamantling the set and trying to modify the optics yourself, which I wouldn't recommend or even suggest to any one but an absolute expert or a maniac who wants to wreck the set as it would be incredibly easy to mess up the alignment, convergence and geometry in the process, and that assumes there is enough movement or adjustment possible in the internal components to actually eliminate the overscan which there may well not be.

You also have to use a hdmi input if you aren't already as the vga input electronically underscans a 1920x1080 input automatically and this can't be overidden. Supposedly this was a concious decison by sony so that when using vga the desktop would not be overscanned but of course it prevents 1x1 mapping and also stops you getting a fullscreen picture.

You can deal with overscan for your desktop either via applications like power strip or in some video drivers which let you use slightly less than the full 1920x1080 for the desktop while still sending the full 1920x1080 feed the tv expects. Essentially you are puting an unused black border round your desktop which is then overscanned leaving you a 1x1 mapped screen filling desktop of something like 1890x1020 or whatever your indivual sets margin of overscan requires. It's actully called overscan compensation in certain nvida drivers. Of course this is no good for 1920x1080 video as it removes a 1x1 map.

Basically you just have to live with the overscan.

 

[cheeky_chappie]

Andy,

Many thanks for the reply. Most apprieciated.

I think i have managed to reach a compromise early hours this morning before you reading your reply..

This what I did -I changed the refresh rate to to 60Hz to give me the underscan feature and then found a underscan/overscan in the ATI drivers and used that to increase the size of the picture to fit the screen. ie the picture has stretched to fill the screen.

I'm not sure whether this way will give me 1:1 pixel mapping. I doubt it, but how can i tell?

For some reason, the underscan/overscan utility is greyed out when its at 50Hz. I don't why this is. any ideas?

Cheers again.