fuzzy text/desktop display with Sony Bravia TV

[Bacillus98]

Hello everyone! I recently purchased a 37" Sony BRAVIA KDL-37XBR6 with the goal of having a pc monitor/tv in an all-in-one package experience. I bought a DVI to HDMI cable as well. My video card is a Radeon 4870 X2, and supports the TV native resolution: 1920 x 1080. The problem I am having is that text is slightly fuzzy. The whole desktop has slight blurring as well(icons slightly out of focus). I have tried many settings the Sony tech support suggested to me, but the text is still slight fuzzy tone. I'm no expert, but I tried to compile a list of issues to help troubleshoot. Some observations I have noticed:

1. In the CCC settings for my ATI card, the over/under scan settings portion is greyed out.

2. Settings for display for Sony Bravia are at full pixel, which according to sony tech support, eliminates overscan.

3. The 1920x1080 resolution displays blurry text for internet web browsing, and in games such as Left 4 Dead/CoD 4 red/blue colored text looks fuzzy at that resolution. There is a black border around the tv approximately 1 inch wide. The games themselves, looked fairly good though.

4. Adjusting the resolution via CCC panel to "1700X1000" (something very close to that since im not sure of exact resolution at the moment) made the image more clear. It's almost as good as a LCD monitor, however the desktop icons and the like are bigger now. I am not sure why this is the case.

5. I only have a DVI to HDMI adapter at the moment. I am willing to buy a DVI to VGA one if that is the only way to solve this issue. However, I thought VGA would limit me to 1360x768 resolution, not the 1920X1080.

6. I paid around 1300.00 dollars for this tv at a local Best Buy. I have around 21 days to return it for a refund if you guys think I made a bad tv purchase decision.

Any help to get a clear, crisp desktop/internet text image on this tv would be greatly appreciated.

[edDV]

Have you tried VGA? Does the TV support 1920x1080 on VGA (Read manual for PC Port)? Most TV sets don't overscan VGA.

Does the TV support direct pixel mapping over HDMI? Most TV sets overscan on HDMI.

I think you are seeing the results of image rescale by the ATI card.

[Bacillus98]

Thanks edDV for the reply. Just to make sure I understand what you are saying...

1. I haven't tried VGA since I dont have VGA/DVI cable yet.
2. I am not sure what you mean by the results of image rescale by the ATI card. Does this mean overscan/underscan settings in CCC?


I found this thread which I think is applicable to my situation, however its highly technical for me. Perhaps others would understand better: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1099702

[jagabo]

There is a black border around the tv approximately 1 inch wide.

Do you see that with the desktop too? That sounds like the graphics card is set to compensate for overscan. Ie, the graphics card is shrinking the desktop and adding black borders around the edge because it thinks the TV is going to cut off the edges with overscan. There should be a way of disabling that.

Oh, another thing to check (although I don't know how in CCC) is the colorspace used by the DVI port. DVI/HDMI can carry either RGB or YCbCr. YCbCr carries colors at half resolution so you will get blurry colors with that. Force RGB if you can. My NVIDIA card outputs YCbCr when set to 1080i, RGB when set to 1080p.

[greymalkin]

you need to get that over/underscan slider working..I had the same issue with my ati card on my samsung 46" LCD. You may need to uninstall/re-install the drivers.

1) First, go to ATI/AMD website and download the latest catalyst control center (contains driver and everything else). Also look for any hotfixes..last I checked the highest version was 8.12 and there was a hotfix for the 4870 cards.

2) Next, go to add/remove programs and remove the current ati software..there should be one item in the add/remove list called ATI Uninstall Utility or something like that. choose that and if it prompts you tell it you want it to delete everything. After it's finished, reboot.

3) At the next bootup install the latest driver and hotfix if available. You may have to reboot another time.

4) Now go to catalyst control center and go to the HDTV settings - Scaling or whatever it's called and set the over/understan slider to 0 (all the way to the right).

[edDV]

Alternate path:

DVI-I to VGA adapter $1.68. These usually come with the card.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

DVI-I to VGA 15ft cable $9.00.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

Its always a good idea to compare VGA to scaled DVI-D/HDMI for text clarity.

Usually a good HDTV will scale better than a display card.