Screen Resolution

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kiwis

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#242696 9-Nov-2018 19:43

I've just plugged my Samsung TV into my laptop. The screen resolutions don't fit. The largest is slightly big, the corners of my browsers are off the screen while anything smaller leaves black space around the edge.

I assume i'll need to do a custom size? any idea what this will be and is this correct?

scuwp

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#2122939 9-Nov-2018 19:48

Does your TV have screen resolution options? Mine have "fill" or "best fit" options in the TV menu.

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rscole86

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#2122944 9-Nov-2018 20:01

My Sony display also has a display area setting of, full pixel, normal or -1.

wazzageek

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#2123001 9-Nov-2018 21:27

Check to see if your display driver has an overscan option, and try toggling that.

Behodar

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#2123002 9-Nov-2018 21:29

Yep, definitely sounds like overscan. This could also be an option on the TV, not the PC.

Scott3

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#2123065 9-Nov-2018 23:46

As others have said, this is overscan.

Dates back to tube TV's, VHS etc. The edge bits of the image a thrown away as the edge of the tube produced a lower quality image. VHS put audio data into the bottom edge of the video.

In the modern day, it turns out that tv shoppers in the showroom perfer a slightly cropped, slightly blurry, larger image, than a true 1:1 pixel representation, so over-scan tends to remain on by default.

Most modern TV's allow you to turn this off, but many older TV's do not.

richms

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#2123068 9-Nov-2018 23:55

Its left on because broadcasters cant manage to not put random junk at the top of the screen when moving video data thru their archaic systems. The fact that it is on is why they insist on putting sports scores and other things so far into the picture that it just looks stupid with overscan turned off.

Just another way that the legacy broadcasting industry is holding things back like when they clung onto 4:3 safe areas for decades after widescreen became a thing.

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Behodar

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#2123100 10-Nov-2018 08:16

richms: Just another way that the legacy broadcasting industry is holding things back like when they clung onto 4:3 safe areas for decades after widescreen became a thing.

The other day I was reading a forum post from someone that worked on high-DPI support for an operating system back in either 1994 or 96; he commented that resolutions had been steadily increasing, so they worked on making the OS work well with high-res screens. As the resolution increases, you can make the UI elements larger so that you get better fidelity without things becoming tiny.

Little did they know that the industry as a whole would get to 1920x1080 and then get stuck there for a decade.