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So last week my monitor went out, so in the interim I thought I would use my 37" Vizio HDTV to connect my PC to it. So I am using a NVIDIA 560Ti going HDMI to HDMI and it just looks aweful. No amount of tinkering makes it look good. I would use DVI but the TV doesnt have a DVI input. However, when I plug in my nettop that uses plain ole RGB the picture looks great in 1080p.

Am I missing something here? I would have thought that HDMI to HDMI would have looked awesome at 1080p.........

Some sort of scaling on the TV I imagine. Any "zoom" or "aspect ratio" on the TV that will make it look better? I assume the TV is native 1920x1080?

DancinJack wrote:

Some sort of scaling on the TV I imagine. Any "zoom" or "aspect ratio" on the TV that will make it look better? I assume the TV is native 1920x1080?

Yes, native is 1920x1080p. I have ensured that any zoom or aspect ratios are off.

Have a model number?

I don't know what it will do to the signal, but you could try a DVI>VGA adapter. My brother uses HDMI to his 37" TV and it looks great.

I had the same problem with my 4670 radeon on my 40" samsung. I had to plug it into the DVI/hdmi port, then I had to rename the port to PC or something, and then I can't remember if I had to change something in the cat control center.

In the end I just set the resolution to 1366X768 lol (but like you said the vga port worked perfect. I remember reading somewhere that the tv will process the signals, but the pc signal does not have to be processed because the vid card has done that already.

DancinJack wrote:

Have a model number?

I don't know what it will do to the signal, but you could try a DVI>VGA adapter. My brother uses HDMI to his 37" TV and it looks great.

E371VL

You know the more I research the more I am thinking that HDCP and or the cable class itself is coming into play here. Maybe I am using a 1.3 cable when I should be using a 1.4 cable......hmmmmm......

It's possible. Says it has support for 1920x1080 PC over HDMI on the Vizio product page.

1.3 cables support everything 1.4 cables do except the ethernet portion of 1.4. May be that your cable is something else.

Well luckily I just ordered a new High speed (1.4CL2) cable from monoprice that will be in today. And a friend is loaning me his DVI to HDMI adapter. So I will post results later tonight.

I was just thinking that maybe its some setting I overlooked on the PC or TV.

tanker27 wrote:

And a friend is loaning me his DVI to HDMI adapter.

Don't forget to hook up yo' sound.

I have seen your described behavior with refresh rate settings. I've connected multiple PCs using Radeon cards to Pioneer KRP-500m plasmas and the plasmas demand a refresh rate of 59Hz instead of 60Hz. 59Hz is tack sharp while 60Hz is a blurry mess. You can also tinker with overscan settings as well as LCD specific settings in the video driver. HDMI should produce crystal clear 1920x1080 video as well as audio on that late model video card. To get audio over a DVI to HDMI conversion, you will need to use a DVI to HDMI adapter made for your specific video card. Most generic DVI to HDMI adapters will not transfer audio from your PC.

nVidia has step by step instructions here and here. You should also capture the EDID information being sent from your TV to see if it's telling the graphics card false information.

Problem solved.

It was a combination of two things, first I was originally using a 1.3 HDMI cable switched to a 1.4 cable and secondly it (the TV) wanted a weird refresh rate, 50HZ to be exact.

Now everything looks good!

tanker27 wrote:

Problem solved.

It was a combination of two things, first I was originally using a 1.3 HDMI cable switched to a 1.4 cable and secondly it (the TV) wanted a weird refresh rate, 50HZ to be exact.

Now everything looks good!

Odd that the 1.3 cable was giving you issues. 50Hz, huh? Watch any sports yet? - Forgot you were using it for PC.

Glad you got it figggrd out though.

Poor image quality over HDMI from a PC is usually caused by HDTV-side image processing. Often there will be an option in the HDTV's menus that will disable this processing, at least for a few predefined resolutions and refresh rates (ie 1920x1080 59.9Hz). If you're not lucky enough to have a TV that can do this, you can override the EDID to make the TV think the signal is plain old DVI.

50hz? That's weird. Do you have interpolation or anything like that turned out? You should be able to output a 1920x1080 60hz signal without any trouble. HDMI 1.3 high speed can handle that no problem.

I doubt the HDMI cable is the culprit. I have been using 1.3 cables with my HTPC setup, through a receiver too. It is most likely the resolution/refresh or "HDTV settings".

The 50Hz solution is curious to say the least, since Vizio make televisions pretty much only for 60Hz regions (as far as I know) so I would expect them not to bother at all to make their TVs compatible with 50Hz input signals. Also, others have already mentioned this, but unless your HDMI 1.3 cable was either damaged or some super-cheap non-compliant part it should behave exactly the same way as an HDMI 1.4 cable with your particular setup.

Meh....not worried about it now, it was just a interim solution until I purchased a replacement monitor. But I will keep all of this in mind for the next time I need a fast fix.