Blurry fonts on LCD TV

K

KenHuxley

New member
Hi all,

I have a Toshiba Satellite M100 laptop. I have a Panasonic LCD TV that I want to use as a second monitor, so I can run multiple software with more "screen real estate." I can get the LCD TV to work as a second monitor and both are set to the same resolution, but all of the fonts are blurry on the LCD TV.

I figure this has something to do with the different aspect ratios of the displays, but I can't figure out how to correct the blurry fonts.

I'm running XP Pro as my OS.

The graphics card is a Mobile Intel 945 GM express chipset.

The driver is an Intel Graphics Media accelerator for Mobile.

Windows sees the LCD TV as a "generic television" but can't find the driver for it online.

Any ideas, guys? I really need to be able to use the LCD TV as a working area but can't get anywhere with the font issue.

Thanks for any help on this while I still have a few hairs that I haven't ripped off my head trying to get this to work. ;-)

Cheers,

Ken
 
Did you change the resolution of the monitor and/or TV so that they would be the same? If you did, don't do that. Leave everything at their native resolution.

Is the video on the TV being viewed at 100% or is it scaled to fit on the screen? This can effect sharpness.
 
Like what big boss said, but I want to ad the question, what is the native resolution of the TV? Also, what is the connection to the TV? S-video? VGA? DV-I?
 
Hi guys,

Thanks for getting back to me with this information.

>>Leave everything at their native resolution.<<

The native resolution for the LCD TV is 1366 x 768 pixels (16:9 aspect ratio).

My laptop is 1024 x 768 pixels (4:3) aspect ratio.

>>what is the connection to the TV<<

The connection to the TV is S-Video.

Here is what I've tried:

Leaving the TV at it's default resolution, I've adjusted the aspect ratio to 4:3 using the LCD TV remote. This has created a mirror of the laptop screen (as opposed to widescreen on the TV). This results in less strech but is still not an exact match. Here, I think, is why:

The problem is with my Intel graphics card interface where it allows me to set up the LCD TV as an extended desktop. In the interface, it only allows me to adjust the TV resolution to either 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768. In either case, even with the laptop screen settings set at 1024 x 768, the math still means that the ACTUAL aspect ratios between the TV: 1366 x 768 and laptop: 1024 x 768, are inequal and I can't force the Intel graphics card interface to allow me to specify a custom resolution for the TV.

The other options I have in the Intel interface are:

For the laptop under display expansion:

Full Screen (No Border)
Center Desktop
Maintain Aspect ratio

For the Television:

Full screen (tick box selected or unselected)

I have tried all 3 laptop options against the television "full screen" optioin ON then OFF. Again, no luck with the blurry fonts.

In the Intel interface both the laptop and TV are set to the following:

Color Quality 32 bit
Screen Resolution: 1024 x 768
Supported refresh rate: 60 Hz

Just to clarify, my goal here is to use the television to give me more working space in Premiere Pro 2. It's the actual program menus and floating palettes that have blurry fonts, making it impossible to expand my workspace on to the TV.

I did a screen shot of the extended desktop and it shows the fonts clear on both the laptop and the TV. It's like the computer sees the fonts clearly, but the slight difference in ACTUAL resolution between the displays is causing the fonts to blur.

Anyway, that's as far as I've gotten. Hopefully this information will be helpful to you if you have the patience to try to help me troubleshoot this thing.

In any case, thank you for your advice so far. Hoping for more direction on what to do next.

Cheers,

Ken








I'm assuming this is where the blurriness is coming from.

On the laptop, I've set the
 
For SVideo, the connection's resolution is 720x480 in non-square pixels. Put your system into 640x480 for an appropriate computer resolution. Although your display can show more resolution SVideo is still SD, whereas 1024x768 is getting up there with HD resolutions.
 
Ahhh...thanks for the info on S-Video non square pixels. Man, always fighting with hardware...

Does anyone know if it's possible that by using a VGA connector or DV-I connector between my laptop and the LCD TV I can resolve the blurring issue? I know that with digital projectors used in laptop presentations this type of thing works.

So far, all I've come up with is that only desktops with video cards like ATI give you the flexibility required to render fonts perfectly using an LCD TV extended desktop. I hope this isn't the case.

Thanks folks. Off to do more research...
 
Well, the limitation you'll always run into, ATI desktop card or not, is going to be the resolution of your connection. SD connections, SVideo and the like, don't just carry data, they carry SD video. The non-square pixel thing is going to be something you run into over any of the SD connections, but don't worry about it, it's not of much consequence for what you're trying to do. So, really, unless your LCD has DVI or VGA inputs, I'd imagine you're not in a really great place right now. Maybe you could fashion up some type of adaptor to use composite inputs, but that's more than I really would care to delve into.

But, before you decide to do more research or anything, just pop your computer into 640x480. Really, unless your monitor has non-SD inputs, that's the only truly workable resolution.
 
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