Why can't I game in full screen on my HDTV?

[Throckmorton]

I have a Sony Bravia 32EX400, using HDMI input from a Sony CW laptop with Geforce 230M. My driver is 259.57 (tried to hack newer ones, didn't work). The screen is set to full pixel and normal 2D applications look perfect, and games run in windows look perfect. The issue is solely with fullscreen gaming.

When I set a game to fullscreen, text always gets corrupted. It's almost like the image is being resampled using nearest neighbor. Everything but the text looks fine.
If I open the steam overlay, text on the overlay looks like that too.
If I take a screenshot, the screenshot looks fine!

Picture from Civ IV:

 

[Throckmorton]

I found this thread describing the same issue (I think, he didn't post a pic). No one had a solution http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/298089-33-corrupt-text-games

 

[Throckmorton]

I found a fix... yes, that was fast. I wasn't googling the right search terms before. The issue is the "content type" the driver reports to the TV. Apparently Sony TVs get confused when the driver switches its "content type" in fullscreen, so you have to set it to Desktop Programs. I don't even understand why this info even gets sent over HDMI.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/325452-33-aliased-text-playing-full-screen-games

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/109084-13-blurry-fullscreen-sharp-windowed-mode