Bad PC visual quality with HDMI (Sceptre TV)

explodatron

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Jan 11, 2009
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I'm having a strange issue. I have the 40 inch Sceptre 1080p TV and I use it for my computer monitor. When I have it hooked up via HDMI the quality is bad. Hooking up via VGA the quality is fantastic. If I hook up via HDMI and set the resolution to 1680x1050, the quality is just as good (maybe a bit better) than when I'm hooked up with VGA and using 1920x1080. No matter what I do when I hook up via HDMI and set the resolution to 1080 the quality is garbage.

Does anyone know what is going on?

Also, I know the sub-category is wrong, but they don't have a diverse enough selection. The category says "graphics & displays" but I get no sub-category for displays.
 
Solution
It's a known issue with Sceptre TV's the HDMI ports are telling it the wrong size, that's why VGA works fine. You can download a program that lets you know what size the TV is saying it is. I did and VGA shows the correct ratio for the size and HDMI is showing an incorrect size. This could be solved easily if they placed drivers on their website to force it the correct size.
Microsoft has researched the issue as well and found the same problem, the company is cheap and will probably not take the effort to put drivers out there.
There were some instructions to make adjustments to the drivers yourself but it was a little too much for me.

abbadon_34

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Are you it's native resolution is 1920x1080? Are you using any converters to HDMI or VGA? Some cheaper LCD TV/Monitors give different results for TV and PC on purpose or just laziness. I have an old cheap ass that works great as a monior but is crap for tv. But I didn't expect much at the time for $100 bucks
 

explodatron

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Well they advertised it as being 1080p native. With VGA it displays in 1080p. I think I found the problem though. The TV does some kind of scaling stuff when it's input is set as PC. My TV only lets me take input as "PC" input when I'm using the VGA port. All input from the HDMI ports use the HDTV settings, which I can't seem to change.

Nothing I can seem to force from the PC end. My TV has a limited menu, unfortunately I think I'm stuck only using VGA.
 

weaselman

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Oct 27, 2012
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It will be more the case that the tv does display 1920x1080 but only in what we call interlaced mode.
Half the lines of the image of the Lcd screen are displayed on the screen, then on a refresh the second set of lines are displayed in rapid secession, a small flickering may be noticed.
Small text in this mode looks bad, and often the image displayed does not fit the screen.
The solution is if the graphics card supports it try an interlaced out put of 1920x1080 to the tv in the cards driver software.

 

explodatron

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I was able to output 1080i in my settings, but it didn't look any better. The TV seems to only output in 1080p when using the CGA port. Seems to be a design of the TV.
 

vir_cotto

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Sep 25, 2006
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It's a known issue with Sceptre TV's the HDMI ports are telling it the wrong size, that's why VGA works fine. You can download a program that lets you know what size the TV is saying it is. I did and VGA shows the correct ratio for the size and HDMI is showing an incorrect size. This could be solved easily if they placed drivers on their website to force it the correct size.
Microsoft has researched the issue as well and found the same problem, the company is cheap and will probably not take the effort to put drivers out there.
There were some instructions to make adjustments to the drivers yourself but it was a little too much for me.
 
Solution