Splintert said:
The TV doesn't actually run at the advertised resolution in most cases, and they use different standards than PC monitor resolutions.
Try 1366x768.
Did that fix your problem Ljas?
For a long time, I used an older 43" plasma screen TV with my gaming computer. It was frankly sub-optimal for precisely the sorts of reasons Splintert describes. The TV had a "Use PC" input selection in its control panel, and of course had a port for the cable. But only some of the resolutions would work properly. Through trial and error I deduced that all of the resolutions of a particular ratio of height to width worked okay. I think it was 3:1 that worked okay. However, only a couple of the low-moderate to moderate pixel-density ratios were effective. At highest resolutions, I wound up with a black border along one side and the bottom. At high, it wasn't optimal for viewing because (obviously) you sit a couple meters or so back from a big screen TV, and that makes small but high resolution images on the screen difficult to see cause the screen is too far away. At the lowest settings (even at the correct ratio) edges of the desktop were off the edge of the screen--in effect the desktop was too big to fit on the screen . . . not to mention it looked grainy as ****.
In the end, I wound up concluding that there were two, possibly three resolutions at which I could use my system 1024 x 768 was if memory serves my standard. If I needed to work with a web page or app that rendered a panel too big to fit fully on the desktop at that resolution, or else some function where I needed the higher resolution, the next step up at 3:1 ratio worked okay, but was sub-optimal just because of how small the details were and sort of required me to scoot closer to the screen. The next one up from that was also barely workable, but also started to show the cropping and even worse eye strain from the tiny details.
So basically, I've learned that, while a really big TV seems to be neat for gaming, it isn't really. Computer monitors tend to have higher resolutions and to serve the specific graphical needs of PC use better than any TV. Still, by fiddling I was able to figure out settings that worked well enough and I used that setup as my primary gaming and work rig for about 6 years (until the HD recently died).
