Help me find a television!

[auto-da-fey]

lol @ fancypants; dude, I'm such a Luddite chump that I'm only on Firefox after intense LPTJ scoffing and scorn at my IE use.

but let's see: PC, with no idea of what SVideo or VGA or DVI even are. I've got the thick black cord with the screws on the sides for visual and an audio cord that goes from the headphones jack and splinters into red/white audio inputs, does that help?

also, the sole reason I don't own an XBox is that it would exacerbate my procrastinating to the point where I'd barely be a functional human being, I'm pretty certain. I've wanted to play the grand Theft Auto games forever, but have avoided them out of certain knowledge that they'd suck me into their sordid world with no exit.


and pollo, mine was on sale for $399, so I'd say you could do pretty well at the holidays.

[auto-da-fey]

cord looks like this--



--so VGA, I guess.

[diesel_powered]

Okay, that tells me what I need to know. I'm going to assume we're talking about a laptop here since I doubt you'd be hauling a desktop over to the TV. I'm also going to assume that the laptop is reasonably newish (say, less than 4 years old) and therefore can handle running a higher resolution.

Basically, you need to change your resolution to fit the TV screen. Right now it's probably either 800x600 or 1024x768 which resolves to 4:3 and works nicely on projectors, etc. for presentations, but not so great for movies. (If you've had to set up a laptop for a presentation with a projector, this is going to be pretty similar.)

What you need to do is go to the control panel in Windows and open up the "display" panel. Click the tab on the far right marked "settings" and you should see two blue squares marked "1" and "2". One is your laptop screen, the other is your TV. Click the one that corresponds to your TV (it should be proportional to the size of the display, if it's not apparent you can click the little "identify" button and the displays will tell you which one they are.) In the settings, change the screen resolution from whatever it's set at to "1280x720". That's the native resolution of your TV (and where the "720" comes from in "720p"). Hit "apply" and all should be well. If something goes wrong, it should revert to the old settings fairly quickly.

Obviously, if this is a computer you have to use for presentations, you'll have to set it back again before hooking up to a projector.

Lemme know if that works, otherwise there are some other options we can explore.

Just for the sake of information, you can see what all the other potential connection options look like here. If you happen to have a newer laptop, or higher end one from a few years ago, DVI to HDMI could be a better connection option for you. (That'd be the longish, regtangular one to the narrow, USB-looking one, respectively.) You can get an adapter cable from Amazon for fairly cheap. It's a digital connection (vs. VGA's analog) and therefore less prone to interference if you happen to live in an older apartment with interference in the wiring. 

[auto-da-fey]

You're a good doctor, Mike. And thorough. Thanks, and will report back later after I try it out.

[donblood]

Nice! This is exactly the size & type of TV I've got my heart set on, and I'm hoping I can get one for three hundo or less around the holidays.

You know Andreas?  He got something very close to that for $310.  I think it's a Sylvania and 720p, but you might want to ask him about it.

[auto-da-fey]

What you need to do is go to the control panel in Windows and open up the "display" panel. Click the tab on the far right marked "settings" and you should see two blue squares marked "1" and "2". One is your laptop screen, the other is your TV. Click the one that corresponds to your TV (it should be proportional to the size of the display, if it's not apparent you can click the little "identify" button and the displays will tell you which one they are.) In the settings, change the screen resolution from whatever it's set at to "1280x720". That's the native resolution of your TV (and where the "720" comes from in "720p"). Hit "apply" and all should be well. If something goes wrong, it should revert to the old settings fairly quickly.

Obviously, if this is a computer you have to use for presentations, you'll have to set it back again before hooking up to a projector.

Lemme know if that works, otherwise there are some other options we can explore.

Okay, I got busy and never really experimented with this, but fiddling with it now, it appears that the screen resolution settings are restricted to discrete options of 1024x768, 1280x768, 1280x1024, etc--I can't find a way to set it to 1280x720. At 1280-768, which is the default setting and closest approximation, there remains an artificial letterboxing that stretches out the image horizontally.

I tried going to 1280x1024 for the sake of tweaking around, and it blew the picture up from fake-letterbox to fullscreen, but then after a few seconds on the TV, it automatically reverted back to form. I tried the troubleshooting guide, which suggested a new driver, but to no avail.

Any ideas?

[diesel_powered]

Sometimes video cards just won't want to allow TV resolutions for some unknown reason. It's not that they can't, it's that the driver thinks they can't. In that case, you need a program to tinker with your resolution output (not as freaky as it sounds). A quick search for the PC software comes up with: http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm I guess it's demoware, but if you looked around you could probably find something else that would do the same thing. Or you could drop $30 since it is a fairly powerful program. On the Mac side, there's SwitchResX which is a favorite of the home theater PC crowd for pulling 1080p24 out of the Macs.

Upon running PowerStrip in Windows on my Mac (through Fusion, so YMMV), it appears that you can right click the little icon in your taskbar and add some monitor profiles. If that's the case, all you'd need to do is create a new one at 1280x720 and 60hz* and that should solve your problems.

If that doesn't work, what you need to do is use PowerStrip to grab the EDID data (the bits of data in your TV that say what kind of TV it is, what kinds of resolution it likes, etc.) from your TV (if it doesn't do it automatically) and then use that to fill in the window you get when you click "advanced timing options" in the profile screen. I can't quite walk you through that since I'm on Windows on a Mac, but it's not as hard as it may seem to. EDID data is reasonably intelligible so all you need to do is find the corresponding entries on the little text file you get and fill them into the appropriate boxes**, if the program doesn't do it for you already. Yes, there can be a risk of damaging your monitor if you screw up the refresh rate on older monitors, but since you have a brand new HDTV, it will just shut off and give you a message about an incompatible refresh rate if you put in the wrong thing. Basically, you may need to enter in info on your monitor and then add in the 1280x720 resolution manually. Everything else (gamma curves, etc.) doesn't apply to this situation.

So try that and if you get stuck, we'll see what's going on. (Seriously, I really do enjoy getting my nerd on and troubleshooting this kind of thing.)

*Nerdtip: If you want to really geek out for film material, you can create another profile with the same resolution and a refresh rate of 23.976 and use that when you're watching material that came from film. All new HDTVs can natively handle 24fps material since that's the frame rate of film and therefore the rate that blu-ray films and some DVDs are encoded. It's not mandatory, but it does give you much smoother and more filmlike motion on material encoded in that way. This does mean you have to switch from one to the other depending on what you're watching, but personally, I think it's rewarding enough to make it worthwhile. But then again, I'm a video geek.

**Basically, it looks complex, but it really isn't. Front porch and back porch refer to where the image begins and ends on either side of the screen, there's some numbers that tell the video card how all the pixels are aligned, and the number of pixels (dictated by the screen resolution... 1280 pixels wide, 720 pixels high), and the refresh rate.

[ellaguru]

I just picked up a new (used) TV. A couple months back, actually several months back, the plastic front part of the on/off switch broke and kinda wedge inside and I've had to fiddle with it to turn the thing on. And then, maybe a month ago I guess the wedgedness hit critical mass and my TV had been doing things like randomly turning on in the middle of the night. And then randomly turning on 15 more times in the middle of the night. Or suddenly cycling through all the channels when I'm trying to watch something.

So I was going to buy a piece of shit TV as I'm not in the moneys right now, but instead I saw a good deal on what was at one point a swanky 32" CRT. It was very heavy, but it's in the house now. It's a big step up for me as the screen is flat (even if it's not LCD) and can take component video rather than just RCA.

Mostly I'm looking forward to not being woken up in the middle of the night because my TV decided it wanted to be on.

[FreddyKnuckles]

You're gonna be pissed you dropped them bones when you realize it was just a poltergeist the whole time anyway.

[ellaguru]

I know. I was thinking, though, what a boring ghost, only wanting to watch TV. I mean, if it wanted to scare me, it would have done other stuff, too, right?

[Greg Nog]

Did the ghost like to watch interesting stuff, at least?

[ellaguru]

Tragically, I don't have cable and the ghost seemed to be able to work the TV but entirely unable to manage the DVD player (putting time of death sometime between, what, 1950 and 2000?). So no, pretty much just a bunch of static.

[FreddyKnuckles]

So no, pretty much just a bunch of static.

Poltergeist.

[FreddyKnuckles]

So I got a bunch of money at BEST BUY for Christmas, and ended up selling my gift cards at plastic jungle in exchange for an amazon card, where I can buy a way better TV for a lot less money (and get in two days for free).

So hey, Which of these tv's do you think is better?  I'm going fucking nuts comparing them! I basically want a slick, thin, LED-LCD with internet apps and an awesome picture.  Blucas, maybe you could ask brent?  I hear google tvs are all bells and whistles with a shitty picture and refresh rate. 

http://www.amazon.com/VIZIO-XVT423SV-42-Inch-Internet-Application/dp/B003GD9G7G/ref=sr_1_19?s=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1294696160&sr=1-19

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-40UX600U-40-Inch-1080p-Black/dp/B0038JED8U/ref=sr_1_2?s=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1294696045&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-BRAVIA-KDL40NX700-40-Inch-1080p/dp/B0036PFD80/ref=sr_1_5?s=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1294696044&sr=1-5

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-UN40C6500-40-Inch-1080p-Black/dp/B0036WT4A6/ref=sr_1_6?s=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1294696042&sr=1-6

http://www.amazon.com/LG-42LE5400-42-Inch-Internet-Applications/dp/B0039JBXSM/ref=sr_1_1?s=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1294696039&sr=1-1

[Ignatius]

I know nothing about internet apps, but Samsung LCDs and Sony Bravias are consistently rated at the top of the class. Anecdotally, my dad's Samsung doesn't handle peripheral inputs as smoothly and the relevant picture/sizing menus and choices are more complete on my Bravia... But they're both 2+ years old, so the firmware for both companies' tvs has probably been updated and tweaked considerably since then.

[FreddyKnuckles]

Cnet rates the vizio the highest of those tvs, and I have a vizio now, but cnet is also stupid.

[Ignatius]

Do they break their ratings down?

[coldforge]

Man, I am so glad that I don't have a TV and know nothing about them. When you guys talk about televisions I feel like you feel when I start talking about selvage denim.

[FreddyKnuckles]

Thanks, that's really helpful. 

Yeah they break down the ratings, but I have no idea if they're just nitpicking nerds or there are serious differences in contrast etc.

[ellaguru]

I picked up a used 32" CRT Sony Trinitron just before Christmas. You could get one of those! It only weighs 9000 pounds and will snugly fit into a large sedan for transport.

[dumbfish]

Got the time to go to a store and look at them in action? Have to admit, the Samsung that the Cnet people were hyping looked the best to me. Paid ca. $820 at Best Buy two weeks ago.
 I wasn't concerned with the LED/LCD distinction or with Internet stuff, so YMMV.

[Ignatius]

Another anecdote - my dad's LCD samsung started showing some pretty bad ghosting towards one edge of the screen after ~2 years of use.

[guavacris]

I picked up a used 32" CRT Sony Trinitron just before Christmas.

Same here! I will be sad when CRTs become rare because they are so much fun to smash in a way LCDs probably can't compete. Plus those things are too expensive to string up in a tree and go at like a pinata.