Using a Toshiba 27" Television For a Monitor

[Padilla]

Hey guys, recently took the pc downstairs and hooked it up to the television through s-video out;. And the moximum resolution I can get is 800 x 600. It looks like it can go up more only to 1024 x 768. But the slider wonnt move. And even at this current resolution the screen on the television has black around all 4 sides. Its not even taking up the entire television. What can I do?? thanks in advance.

 

[loic2003]

AFAIK regualr TV's only do 800 x 600.

It'll make for a crap monitor too, you'll notice that the pixels are much further apart than computer monitors. That's because they're designed to be viewed from your couch 2 meters away rather than ~50cm like a monitor.

Or am I looking at it wrong, are you trying to make some kind of media center out of it? Have a look at the manual for the TV, but I'm pretty sure that it won't go higher than the above res...

 

[dscline]

Actually, standard definition TVs can't do better than 640x480. Most video cards with s-video out will let you select higher resolutions, but in effect, all that really does is make everything smaller, and more blurry. It's downrezzed to what the TV can display. The higher resolutions are useful if you are using a computer monitor and the TV at the same time, and want the higher resolution on the monitor even if it means making what's on the TV harder to read. I have an HTPC that is hooked up to a 46" HDTV, and even with the resolution that TV is capable of (over DVI... s-video can only transmit SD signals), I still only run it at 540x960, as that's the highest my set is capable of running in progressive mode. I CAN output @ 1920x1080, but that mode isn't very useful for computer work. The combination of the interlacing and the fact that everything is really too small to get sufficient detail out of make it too hard to read. The higher resolution is really only useful for HD video.

 

[Peter]

Regular TV actually is only 480 lines for NTSC and 576 for PAL. You need to set your graphics driver to "overscan" mode rather than "bordered", that's all you can do. Setting a higher display resolution will not increase physical resolution; that'll just be interpolated back to the 480-line format the SVideo signal uses.