Resolution - Why does an LCD TV look ugly as a monitor?

26
2014-06
  • asdgfasdfasdf

    I extended my desktop to my 32" Emmerson LCD TV and set my resolution to the native 1366x760 which is 720P but things still look "ugly". The text is by far not as crisp as a monitor, however a 720p TV channel or movie looks fine. Why is this? Is it because the screen is physically too big? What is the relationship between resolution and screen size. 720p looks good on a 32" TV, but what about a 60", 100", 1000000"? Is there an upper limit to the physical size compared to resolution and that is why my monitor looks ugly?

    • Answers
  • Cornelius

    TVs, unlike computer monitors, historically enable overscan by default – they cut off a few pixels from each border of the input, and zoom in the rest. For compatibility, they do this even for digital inputs like HDMI, though most of them have an option to turn this off.

    Since the image is zoomed a little, input pixels no longer correspond to screen pixels, and text ends up being blurry.

    Look for a setting called "overscan", "display area: full pixel", "dot by dot", "screen fit", or similar.


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    nvidia - LCD monitor reports incorrect maximum resolution
  • SLaks

    I have four 20" Planar 2010M LCD monitors with a maximum resolution of 1600 x 1200 connected to two nVidia video cards (8600 GT and 7600 GS). I'm running Windows Server 2003 x86.

    Recently, two of the monitors have started mis-reporting their maximum resolution as 1280 x 1024. When this first happened, I used nVidia's Custom Resolutions feature to force the monitors back to 1600 x 1200. Yesterday, however, I upgraded nVidia's video card driver, and ever since, I cannot get the DVI one back to 1600 x 1200. When I add the custom resolution in nVidia's control panel, if I set either the width or the height to even a single pixel more than 1280 x 1024, nothing changes when I click Test (the monitor doesn't even flash black, although after 15 seconds, it flashes black and doesn't change). After adding

    Does anyone know what the problem is?

    Is there anything I can do about it?


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  • Brettski

    Have you checked with the monitor manufacturer to see if they have any drivers/ini's for the monitors. If they are available, it will help your video card identify them correctly.