TCL 40" LCD Resolution problems

dank · **29th February 2008, 02:26 AM**

I recently purchased a 40" TCL LCD (link to specs) and I am reasonably happy with it. I just have a couple of issues. First of all I can't seem to get it to display at it's native resolution of 1366x768. Only 1280 x 720, which looks reasonably good in mce, but pretty poor in windows (not that I really care how it looks in windows just seems to be a good indication of the viewing quality).

My video card is an Asus GS 7300 which doesnt have the resolution in windows as an option, however I tried manually entering 1366 x 768 in to nvidia software as a custom resolution but the LCD didnt like that.

Anyone got any ideas?

The other problem I am having I have only just started noticing while I was watching the footy the other night, everything seems very framey and it is actually very off putting. You cant really notice it when watching most things, just things with lots of movement.

Is this caused by the resolution being set incorrectly or is this something I am going to have to live with? Or is it a totally different problem all together?

Cheers
Dank

TheRob · **29th February 2008, 10:06 AM**

Unfortunately 1366x768 is not a standard PC resolution, so most graphics cards won't let you set this. I'd say your current resolution is probably the best fit as it's a standard HDTV resolution (720p).

As you've noticed the Vista desktop will look a bit ugly, but depending on what you're watching, the picture quality in Media Center shouldn't be compromised. HD channels are broadcast at a lower resolution anyway, so all live and recorded TV (and DVD) will be 'adjusted' to whatever resolution you've set. True HD sources like Bluray are a different story. But if you don't have a HD player, then you won't notice the difference of not having one-to-one pixel mapping.

Your motion problems will probably have nothing to do with your media centre. The handling of motion has been the achilles heal of LCDs for a long time. Don't know much about the TCL brand, but you could have a hunt through the menus and see what's there. Quite often LCDs have some setting for 'dynamic' pictures that's supposed to enhance fast moving images. In my experience this usually makes fast moving sequences worse as it tends to give an 'artificial' look to the picture. Anyway, only way to know is to experiment.

dank · **29th February 2008, 10:23 AM**

Well I have sort of had some success. I can now get the lcd to display 1360 x 768. However, for some reason it is bigger than the screen and to see all of the screens content i have to use the mouse to pan across and then it comes up. I am now trying to use nvidia settings to rectify this

philzgr8 · **29th February 2008, 10:33 AM**

I'm not familiar with your particular graphics adapter but the fact is that the closest most will get to that resolution is 1360 x 768. That is because they work in increments of 8 pixels and 1366 is not a multiple of 8. That said it really is irrelevant since HD content is generally broadcast in 1080i or 720p and BluRay is generally 1080p. This means that no matter what you set on a panel like that you will be scaling the image and 720p is as good as anything to scale to. That in the end is the difference between HD and Full HD where the native res of the panel is 1920 x 1080.

philzgr8 · **29th February 2008, 10:34 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by dank

Well I have sort of had some success. I can now get the lcd to display 1360 x 768. However, for some reason it is bigger than the screen and to see all of the screens content i have to use the mouse to pan across and then it comes up. I am now trying to use nvidia settings to rectify this

Yes this is what we refer to as overscan. The later Nvidia drivers will allow you to compensate for it only if you run your display at 60Hz. (Beta drivers are available to allow this @ 50Hz) This is a problem since PAL content should be displayed @ 50Hz.

TheRob · **29th February 2008, 11:00 AM**

For what it's worth, I spent several weeks trying out various utilities (like Powerstrip), driver versions, and connection methods to tweak screen resolutions so that I could get one-to-one pixel mapping on my 32" Sharp, which is also a 1366x768 panel. The closest I could get was 1360x768 with overscan corrected to some extent by later drivers.

Funny thing is, I'm now back running at the resolution and frequency that I started with - 1280x720@60Hz via HDMI. It provides the best picture quality when watching live or recorded SD & HD FTA TV or DVDs, which is what I do with the unit 99% of the time. All the tweaking I did made the Windows destop look better, but to the detriment of the MC stuff. The simplest solution ended up being the best in my case. YMMV!

philzgr8 · **29th February 2008, 11:20 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheRob

For what it's worth, I spent several weeks trying out various utilities (like Powerstrip), driver versions, and connection methods to tweak screen resolutions so that I could get one-to-one pixel mapping on my 32" Sharp, which is also a 1366x768 panel. The closest I could get was 1360x768 with overscan corrected to some extent by later drivers.

Funny thing is, I'm now back running at the resolution and frequency that I started with - 1280x720@60Hz via HDMI. It provides the best picture quality when watching live or recorded SD & HD FTA TV or DVDs, which is what I do with the unit 99% of the time. All the tweaking I did made the Windows destop look better, but to the detriment of the MC stuff. The simplest solution ended up being the best in my case. YMMV!

Trying to achieve 1:1 pixel mapping on anything other than a Full HD display IMO is a waste of time. Even if you achieve it the picture is being scaled.

dank · **2nd March 2008, 12:20 PM**

thanks for the help guys. looks like ill just have to live with the frameyness. Just thought it was a bit odd as my old cheapo 26" LCD handled movement just fine. Why is that?

TheRob · **3rd March 2008, 02:19 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by dank

thanks for the help guys. looks like ill just have to live with the frameyness. Just thought it was a bit odd as my old cheapo 26" LCD handled movement just fine. Why is that?

I'd double check all of the settings on your TCL TV to see if it has some supposed 'motion smoothing' function or the like that you can turn OFF.

BTW what resolution and frequency did you end up using? I originally had mine set to 720p @50Hz 'cause I'd read a lot of posts saying to set this frequency for PAL broadcast stuff. But I got a pretty poor picture using this. Changing to 720p at 60Hz gave me much better results.