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Why does 1080p through a VGA cable fit my HDTV but is oversized when through an HDMI cable?

Why does 1080p through a VGA cable fit my HDTV but is oversized when through an HDMI cable?

I have put together a new PC with a XFX GeForce GTX 260 graphics card and have it connected to my HDTV.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 338
Total answers/comments: 2
Guest [Entry]

What you're seeing is called overscan. TVs have it as broadcasts in NTSC format sometimes did not fill the entire space on the screen. You'll need to look through your menus for a setting to adjust the overscan amount to 0%. You may even have to find a way to get into your TV's service menu to make this adjustment.
Guest [Entry]

"I had the opposite issue with my Samsung and an ATI card, it was shown with black bars around the edge by default whilst running in native 1920x1080 - TV was set to 'just scan'.

I fixed this in the Catalyst Control Centre - there was an underscan option that by default was set to allow TV's such as yours to display the full picture - this scaled the image without changing the signal sent to the TV (i.e. it was still full HD and a standard resolution).

Not sure if nVidia has something similar though...

As for 'why different on VGA and HDMI' - I'm guessing this is the same reason as most standard displays - VGA is scaled based on the furthest active pixels in each direction (e.g. 'Auto adjusting' on most monitors) whereas HDMI contains resolution information which means no trial and error scaling. If the question was why different on DVI vs HDMI, I'd be stumped :)"