Monitor insanity

[purrzz70]

Okay....call me stupid!!!

I recently decided to get rid of my Viewsonic 19" and use my Sharp Aquos tv as my pc monitor. Thing is, I've been trying everything to get the gosh darn thing to work. I purchased a DVI-HDMI cable...no luck.

What on earth am I missing. When I turn on the PC nothing shows up. And now when I try to hook up my old monitor...it still says "no signal". The power is hooked up, the DVI cable is hooked up. What the heck am I doing wrong.

HELP!!! I've missed out on 5 days of WoW already, and I'm about to have withdrawal symptoms....something like taking an axe to everyone!!! HELP!!!

 

[alkemyst]

what video card and was your 19" a CRT originally...you may have the refresh too high

 

[edm]

try messing with the resolution and or refresh rates. I actually hooked a laptop up to my Aquos for the first time last night. At first I got the 'signal is not compatible' message. I had to lower the resolution to 1280x768 to get it working. I was just using the VGA input though, not HDMI.

 

[alkemyst]

Yeah resolution too...try the basics first at a low refresh rate. Many TV's ignore anything they can't display where a monitor will sometimes report on screen the issue (resolution / refresh rate out of range).

 

[Apocalypse23]

i have a sharp aquos 46". Try doing this as well:

on your sharp remote control hit:
INPUT, THEN SELECT INPUT5
THEN HIT VIEWMODE BUTTON, SELECT DOT BY DOT.

Another thing after you do these steps is to try to switch the DVI connectors from 1st to 2nd to see which one gives a signal.

Goodluck!

PS- you need to tell us your vid card, and you need to configure the vid card to be at the sharp's native res after you get a signal.

 

[Golgatha]

I here you OP. I have a Sharp Aquos 32in 1080p TV with a native DVI input. The supported video modes are in the manual, but none of them are anywhere close to 1080p or even 720p (I think one mode was 1440xsomething), and none of them are actually digital. I tried several of the "supported" modes just so see if I could fudge something and adjusted the ATI CCC settings to detect a HDTV. Played around with the OSD controls on the TV too with no positive results. Nothing worked past 1024x768 and that resolution was either stretched or too small to be usable in the dot for dot mode of the TV.

After an hour of fiddling and frustration (I wish I had RTFM to begin with, to see the DVI port wasn't really digital and didn't support 1080p), I just used the DVI to HDMI converter for my video card and purchased another HDMI cable. Been smooth sailing ever since going between 1080p and 720p. Only trick was the TV had to be on the correct input when the PC boots for the first time so the OS can detect and configure it as a primary monitor. My Blu-ray jukebox is now happy and content to serve its intended purpose.

Now I just need a receiver can do TrueHD audio and a video card which supports it.

Edit: OP, you're not stupid. Sharp is stupid for not having a DVI-D port with HDCP on it for us PC users.