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General discussion

Aspect ratio changes after switching from VGA to DVI/HDMI?

Nov 13, 2008 8:13PM PST

I've had my LN52A650 for about 5 days now. I used to connect it to my pc via VGA and in windows (Vista 32), the desktop fills the whole screen with resolution set to 1080p.

Now that I connect using a DVI/HDMI cable, I noticed that the aspect ratio changed slightly. When looking at my desktop, it no longer fills my whole screen and there is some "windowboxing" - horizontal and vertical black bands around the screen.

The windowboxing is quite thin, but still, I never had this using VGA.

The graphics card is set to output 1920x1080, and the picture size in the TV's menu is set to 16:9.

Anyone else have this issue, and how can I fix this?

Discussion is locked

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Just Scan
Nov 14, 2008 6:15AM PST

Try enabling the Just Scan picture mode.

From your remote:

Menu > Picture > Size > Just Scan

That may do the trick.

--HDTech

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Just Scan makes it worse
Nov 14, 2008 7:58AM PST

Just Scan makes the windowboxing even larger!

Is there something I need to do in Vista or another setting on the TV, or could it be the DVI/HDMI cable issue?

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FIXED!
Nov 15, 2008 3:18PM PST

Solved itself after I updated NVidia drivers on the PC.

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Thanks...
Nov 16, 2008 12:29PM PST

Thanks for keeping us posted.

Usually the driver updates from the manufacturer solve most of the issues. But I appreciate you coming back in with the good news!

--HDTech

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Identical issue with different graphics card
Dec 18, 2008 9:39PM PST

I'm having the same problem with my LN52A650, but am using a 1Gb Radeon HD 4850. As far as I can tell I have the latest drivers for both the samsung (version 2007.0) and the graphics card (version 8.540.4.1000, date: 10/8/200Cool. Connecting my pc via the VGA cable works perfectly. The screen is completely filled and the characters are very sharp. Connecting via the DVI/HDMI cable into the HDMI 2 input and using 'Just Scan' on the TV produces a letterbox effect on all sides (roughly 100 pixels.) The TV however does show the input signal as 1920x1080@60hz. Switching to '16:9' expands the picture slightly but the letterbox effect continues on all sides.

I'm guessing that since updated drivers fixed the problem for kingtz, it's likely a graphics card issue and not the samsung, but I figured I'd open this discussion back up to see if any others are experiencing the same problem. I'd like to use the HDMI input so I can utilize AMP when watching TV through the PC.

I'm running Windows Vista Home Premium 64bit on an HP Pavillion Elite d5100t ATX desktop.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

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ATI driver option
Dec 19, 2008 3:28AM PST

ATI has the funny behavior of *underscanning* the picture by default, to compensate for TVs that don't have a "just scan" option like Samsung.

If you go into the ATI driver (Catalyst control center, right click your desktop and go to the ATI settings), make sure it's in advanced mode, there will be a list of connected devices on the left. Mine says something like "DTV 2".

Hit the "+" next to the option to expand the list, go to "Scaling Options". There will be a slider to control underscan. Drag it all the way to 0% and voila it should be fixed.

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That worked perfectly!
Dec 19, 2008 6:00AM PST

Thanks for the tip, clicq!