Widescreen TV from ATI HD4350

I am having great difficult configuring my Dell PC with an HD4350 to
show correctly on my Panasonic 32in LCD TV. This was to be the main
purpose for buying this PC!
There are very limited choices of resolution.
Choosing the highest resolution, whilst within the max for the TV
actually looks worse than lower. But that is the only res' that will
give the correct 16:9 ratio!
At some lower resolution than that the TV display actually goes black!

Not connected, but an additional problem, is that Dell have advised me
that this PC has a problem with Panasonic TV's connected via HDMI.
They say I have to wait for a new BIOS update.!

Is there any easy guide to configuring the card, maybe with Caralyst?

Thanks

Nigel

nandrews wrote:
> I am having great difficult configuring my Dell PC with an HD4350 to
> show correctly on my Panasonic 32in LCD TV. This was to be the main
> purpose for buying this PC!
> There are very limited choices of resolution.
> Choosing the highest resolution, whilst within the max for the TV
> actually looks worse than lower. But that is the only res' that will
> give the correct 16:9 ratio!
> At some lower resolution than that the TV display actually goes black!
>
> Not connected, but an additional problem, is that Dell have advised me
> that this PC has a problem with Panasonic TV's connected via HDMI.
> They say I have to wait for a new BIOS update.!
>
> Is there any easy guide to configuring the card, maybe with Caralyst?
>
> Thanks
>
> Nigel

I tried my 4870 on my 50" LG Plasma and it looked good at 1680x1050 to
me but I guess on LCD it is not quite the same. In Cat settings you can
choose custom HDTV resolutions, enable 1280x720 and try that, should
look fine at that res.

* nandrews:
> I am having great difficult configuring my Dell PC with an HD4350 to
> show correctly on my Panasonic 32in LCD TV. This was to be the main
> purpose for buying this PC!
> There are very limited choices of resolution.
> Choosing the highest resolution, whilst within the max for the TV
> actually looks worse than lower. But that is the only res' that will
> give the correct 16:9 ratio!
> At some lower resolution than that the TV display actually goes black!

Maybe you could give away some more details? For example, since
Panasonic made more than a single model of 32in LCD TV the exact model
would be a start. Also, what is the native(the physical resolution of
the LCD panel, not the max resolution the TV can accept!) resolution of
your TV then? How is the PC connected (VGA, DVI, HDMI, Component, Y/C,
CVBS)?

Also, you have to switch off overscan in the TV's settings. Overscan
means that the TV zooms a bit into the image, and this means even if you
feed your TV at its native resolution the image won't be pixel-matched
and look awful.

Benjamin

Thanks to you both for your replies.

Elmer - I have just tried setting 1280x720 and the Panasonic screen
goes black! So it seems to be another res' which it doesn't support.
I would have tried your own 1680x1050 next, but as the Panasonic pixel
ratio is 1366 x 768 I don't think it will work.


Benjamin I thought I had given some of those details.

The Panasonic model is TX-32LXD80
The pixel ratio is 1366 x 768

The connecton I would prefer is HDMI, but as I said Dell have a
problem with that and say a BIOS upgrade is required to fix. So I am
presently connecting the Panasonic via a VGA adapter to the the DVI
socket and when necessary swapping that for the regular monitor
connected to the VGA socket, to recover the setting that worked.

I can get some resolutions to display, but they are all wrong for
16:9, so circles and heads look like squashed eggs (too wide!). All
except 1360x768 which as near as I can get to the Panasonic max and
have proper round circles. But then curiously the display is pretty
bad with fonts looking messy and colour fringes on some edges!

I don't seem to have any control of overscan, I assume from the TV
itself. The only settings on the PC connection are:-

Clock, H-pos, V-pos, Clock phase and Sync
R-Gain, G-Gain, B-Gain and Gamma

Does this give any more information that can help you diagnose?

Thanks

Nigel




On 1 Nov, 09:44, Benjamin Gawert <bgaw...@gmx.de> wrote:
> * nandrews:
>
> > I am having great difficult configuring my Dell PC with an HD4350 to
> > show correctly on my Panasonic 32in LCD TV. This was to be the main
> > purpose for buying this PC!
> > There are very limited choices of resolution.
> > Choosing the highest resolution, whilst within the max for the TV
> > actually looks worse than lower. But that is the only res' that will
> > give the correct 16:9 ratio!
> > At some lower resolution than that the TV display actually goes black!
>
> Maybe you could give away some more details? For example, since
> Panasonic made more than a single model of 32in LCD TV the exact model
> would be a start. Also, what is the native(the physical resolution of
> the LCD panel, not the max resolution the TV can accept!) resolution of
> your TV then? How is the PC connected (VGA, DVI, HDMI, Component, Y/C,
> CVBS)?
>
> Also, you have to switch off overscan in the TV's settings. Overscan
> means that the TV zooms a bit into the image, and this means even if you
> feed your TV at its native resolution the image won't be pixel-matched
> and look awful.
>
> Benjamin

* nandrews:

> Benjamin I thought I had given some of those details.

You didn't, otherwise I wouldn't ask.

> The Panasonic model is TX-32LXD80
> The pixel ratio is 1366 x 768

Then this is the resolution you should use, or 1360x768 if this is
available, but nothing else. The TX-32LXD80 will take 1920x1080 but then
scales down to 1366x768 which impacts image quality as the pixels don't
match.

> The connecton I would prefer is HDMI, but as I said Dell have a
> problem with that and say a BIOS upgrade is required to fix.

Can you try with another gfx card?

> I can get some resolutions to display, but they are all wrong for
> 16:9, so circles and heads look like squashed eggs (too wide!). All
> except 1360x768 which as near as I can get to the Panasonic max and
> have proper round circles. But then curiously the display is pretty
> bad with fonts looking messy and colour fringes on some edges!

Did you disable overscan for the HDMI port? If not, the image won't be
pixel matched and therefore look like ****.

> I don't seem to have any control of overscan, I assume from the TV
> itself. The only settings on the PC connection are:-
>
> Clock, H-pos, V-pos, Clock phase and Sync
> R-Gain, G-Gain, B-Gain and Gamma

These are settings for the analogue input. Have a look at the HDMI port.

Benjamin

* Benjamin Gawert:

>> I don't seem to have any control of overscan, I assume from the TV
>> itself. The only settings on the PC connection are:-
>>
>> Clock, H-pos, V-pos, Clock phase and Sync
>> R-Gain, G-Gain, B-Gain and Gamma
>
> These are settings for the analogue input. Have a look at the HDMI port.

Here is the manual for your TV:
<http://tda.panasonic-europe-service.com/GetDoc.aspx?did=160559&src=3&lang=en&fmt=pdf>

Page 52 lists all acceptable resolutions for the VGA and the HDMI port.

Page 25 says your TV does have an overscan control in the menue. It is
in the setup menue (see p26).

Benjamin

nandrews wrote:
> Thanks to you both for your replies.
>
> Elmer - I have just tried setting 1280x720 and the Panasonic screen
> goes black! So it seems to be another res' which it doesn't support.
> I would have tried your own 1680x1050 next, but as the Panasonic pixel
> ratio is 1366 x 768 I don't think it will work.

Then try other 16:9 resolutions until you find one that is acceptable
and use 1:1 pixel mapping as the other person said. I had an LCD with
native res the same as yours and it gave me issues too but I was able to
use 1280x720 ok and that was fine for games. The res the manual said to
use with PC use was 1024x768 which is 4:3 ratio and looked like crap.
There is a utility you can buy/demo that allows you to set custom
timings and resolutions but I can't remember the name of it now. The
reason the screen went black at 1280x720 is a timing issue and not
because the TV can't be forced to do it. If your TV was 1920x1080 native
I expect you wouldn't have this issue.

Thanks once again for all of your input on my problem.
I will give them a long and hard look.

One thing that may change the situation is that I can now connect with
HDMI!
However it needs to be connected AFTER the PC has started booting!
Obviously not an ideal situation and Dell are still looking into the
problem.

But I can work with it and the PC recognises the TV and immediately
gave a proper formated display (with round circles)!
It intially was set as 720p and I have now changed it to 1080p.

I will look at all your suggestions and see how they will improve what
I have now.

Thanks once again for all of your helpful responses.

Nigel

* nandrews:

> But I can work with it and the PC recognises the TV and immediately
> gave a proper formated display (with round circles)!
> It intially was set as 720p and I have now changed it to 1080p.

Use the 720p resolution. Setting the resolution to 1080p on a 1366x768
TV brings you nothing, except that the image isn't pixel matching and
that the GPU has a higher load.

Benjamin

nandrews wrote:
> Thanks once again for all of your input on my problem.
> I will give them a long and hard look.
>
> One thing that may change the situation is that I can now connect with
> HDMI!
> However it needs to be connected AFTER the PC has started booting!
> Obviously not an ideal situation and Dell are still looking into the
> problem.
>
> But I can work with it and the PC recognises the TV and immediately
> gave a proper formated display (with round circles)!
> It intially was set as 720p and I have now changed it to 1080p.
>
> I will look at all your suggestions and see how they will improve what
> I have now.
>
> Thanks once again for all of your helpful responses.
>
> Nigel
>

I connect my computer HDMI to my Denon receiver which then connects to
the LG 1920x1080 Plasma and I get sound and 1680x1050 video over the
HDMI connection perfectly.

I just remembered the name of that utiltiy. It's called Powerstrip by
Entech. Check it out.

http://www.entechtaiwan.com/