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DVI to HDMI conversion loses part of the screen

I helped my friend to connect his video card to his TV with a DVI to HDMI cable. But the problem is however we adjust the resolution, we could not see the 4 boarders of the desktop.

We tried to adjust the "aspect" option of the TV, it doesn't work either. In this case, it's really very troublesome to use the computer.

Is there anything we could do to get the full desktop?

Force Mac to detect displays?

I have a Mac mini in a somewhat complex home-theatre setup. Often the Mac won't correctly recognize the TV as a display. The TV will just report "No signal". There are two methods to recover from this state.

1. Unplug the display cable from the Mac and plug it back in
2. Sleep the Mac and wake it up again.

Both are a bit cumbersome. Is there any way to force the Mac to re-detect or re-initialize it's displays? I've tried Command-F2 and a couple AppleScripts but nothing seemed to work.

How functional/practical is it to use an hdtv as a computer monitor?

My small (22") monitor went bad on the pc I use to watch hulu/netflix with... The kids like to use this computer to play online games. I am considering buying a HDTV (~32") to replace the smaller lcd. Is this a viable solution that will give satisfactory performance for both types of use?

iTunes Season Pass downloading both HD and SD version of a TV Show

I purchased a TV Show season pass on the iTunes Store for the HD version of a show.

It started downloading immediately, which is great - however, it also decided that I would want the SD versions as well?!

Why? Is this normal? Does iTunes always bundle the SD versions when you buy HD versions? How can I stop iTunes from trying to download the SD version each time I open it?

Can I play games on my laptop with HDMI output to a television

I am getting a Dell XPS laptop as a Christmas present. From what I have been reading online it can play some modern PC games pretty well (3 GB Nvidia® GeForce® GT 555M). I don't want to play games on a small laptop screen. Can I hook it up to my HD television and use it like a defacto gaming console?

I am guessing there might be some kind of problem with screen resolutions not matching up or something like that. Is there any extra hardware I need to buy?

Using a Mac on a TV - Increase size of elements without decreasing resolution

I have a Mac Mini hooked up to my 50" TV, which works great for lots of stuff like movies, but pretty poorly for things with text (menus, web browser). Is there a way to make the default size of pretty much everything bigger without decreasing the resolution and making videos look crappy?

Does 3D content require special HDMI cables?

I recently started reading up on HDMI versions. Do the different versions of HDMI need different cables?

In particular, I am concerned if I should get new cables in order to support 3D (some cables advertise their 3D support, but I'm not sure if that's just a marketing gimmick). I will be picking up my new 3D display tomorrow and I want to make sure I have everything I need.

What is the difference between 1080p, 1080P and 1080i?

Many times, I have seen resolution of 1080p and I know that it means 1080 pixels but I also have seen specifications on some HDTVs to be 1080i. So, I want to know the exact difference between them and whether 1080i video quality is available for the laptops too.

I googled and found out that at some sites, they mention 1080P rather than 1080p. Is there any difference between the two or they represent the same thing?

Rev1: Now I know that 1080p means 1080 horizontal lines of vertical resolution in a progressive-scan video

How do I enable/disable overscan on my TV in Catalyst Control Center?

I've connected my PC to my TV via HDMI (I've also tried using DVI). Whatever the resolution (anything from 800 x 600 to 1080p), the image displayed on the TV does not fill the entire screen surface; there's a black border on the edge of the image. This happens in both Vista and Windows 7.

After a bit of searching I came to the conclusion it's got something to do with overscan done by the graphics card (ATI 3200HD). It's definitely not the TV because on my old PC there were no such problems. I've searched for the option in Catalyst Control Center 9.9 but it's not available for the TV; if I connect a normal LCD display, the option is there, but only for the LCD screen. If I choose Configure for my TV, where the overscan option should be, it takes me to the Welcome tab in CCC. How can I make the image fill the entire screen? How can I enable/disable overscan for my TV?

VGA resolution with Sony Bravia TV

I just bought Sony Bravia KDL40S5100 tv. The VGA input is acting weird. I have a Gateway desktop with Windows 7 and Intel 945 graphics. I also have a laptop running Ubuntu 9.04.

The TV will not display the gateway when the resolution is over 1360x768, I have to wait for it to time out and bring me back. The Intel driver even urges me to switch to the "recommended" 1920x1080. I just installed Win7 using this tv as the monitor. When the orginial welcome screen started after setup, it started me at 1080. I had to start in safemode to set a res that would work!

When I plug my laptop into the TV, 1920x1080 works just fine.

Any ideas?

This laptop also has Win7, which I am going to try, but I haven't gotten a chance yet.

ATI HDMI Audio disappears in Windows 7 when a TV is connected

So far I have unsuccessfully googled for HOURS with no luck fixing this very annoying problem.

The settings is the following:

• I have PC running Windows 7 RC (64-bit)
• Video card is a ATI Radeon 4850 series card (Sapphire HD 4850 512MB to be exact)
• The video card has HDMI out with built-in audio chip
• I have an HDMI cable connecting the PC to a TV (Sony Bravia series)

The problem is that when I connect the HDMI cable to the TV, the ATI HDMI Sound output device disappears completely from the list of playback devices in Windows.

As a workaround I can restore the audio by re-installing the HDMI audio driver. However, when I disconnect the TV the driver disappears again. So basically, every time I want to watch stuff on my TV, I have to reinstall audio driver, which of course is VERY annoying.

EDIT: I have figured out that I do not need to re-istall the HDMI audio driver to restore sound; I only need to reboot my computer with the HDMI cable plugged in to restore the audio driver. This suggests that the problem has something to do with information passed from TV to computer, which makes my HDMI Audio driver disappear.

Are there any other, more elegant workarounds for this problem?

How can we increase secondary screen resolution from 1280x 800 to 1920x1080 for an LCD TV?

My company had a 42" LCD TV with softward to connect a laptop for projection of images onto the TV. Our company laptops all have native screen resolution of 1280x800. We recently purchased a 55" LCD because the image on the 42" was not large enough in the conference room for all to see. Now all we get is the same size image on the bigger screen with a big black frame around it. We assume this is due to the TV's resolution being 1920x1080 and our laptops functioning at 1280x 800. Is there ANYTHING we can do (short of purchasing new laptops with higher native resolution) to make this work?

Suggestions for small, power efficient, media center PC? [closed]

I need a Windows Media Center PC. It should have:

• HDMI output
• small form factor
• Be able to handle a TV tuner that can decode clear QAM (i get basic cable w/o a decoder box and i get all the local channels in HD for free)
• It will be in the living room, so it should be small, quiet and power efficient
• shouldn't cost more than a HD Tivo box.

Any suggestions for vendors, sites I should look at?

TV doesn't automatically show signal from Windows Media Center

I have Windows Media Center running on Win7 RTM with a GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard. The integrated video card is an ATI Radeon HD 3200.

It's connected to a Sony Bravia KDL-46XBR4 tv via HDMI cable.

When I turn both on at the same time, I get great sound and video.

The issue is that when I leave the computer on and turn off the TV, the TV does not display the video or audio signal when I turn the TV back on.

• The computer is set to never turn of the display.
• I've tried different HDMI cables - I have two, a brand-name and a no-name cable.
• I've tried different HDMI input ports - all have the same behavior.
• I've tried cycling the TV to switch to different inputs and back, no dice
• I've tried Ctrl+Alt+Delete - no dice.
• I can confirm that the computer is running by connecting via remote desktop.

Only two things seem to work:

• shutdown and startup
• sleeping the computer and starting up.

Neither of those "solutions" work well, as I'm looking for a pure couch potato solution.

What software should I use to display an elegant looking take-out menu on an HDTV monitor? (data pulled from local MySQL server)

My mom owns a small take-and-bake market, and she's been keeping her menu and inventory on an ugly and messy set of whiteboards behind the counter. I've developed a database that lets her check things in and out of the freezer with a barcode scanner, and we have all our menu and inventory data accurate and available on an in-house MySQL server (running Ubuntu Server).

I want to buy a couple of HDTV displays to mount behind the counter instead of the whiteboards, and have a dedicated computer display a nice-looking digital menu with accurate inventory numbers, a big red line through anything that's out of stock, etc. I can have all the data necessary accessible either directly through MySQL or via a simple JSON API-- but short of making a full-screen web browser with very nit-picky CSS, I'm not sure what software to use for the actual display. Anything come to mind, internet?

Ideally, it should be able to show a little slideshow of food photos on the side, or maybe a scrolling list of specials. I know this is possible, McDonalds is doing it in their new McCafe locations.

TIA, Mike