Couple questions on setting up a new media center

[cgoodman381]

Hi! This site was first on my 'media center forum' google.

Right now I have a media center hooked up to my Panasonic TH-42PX75U plasma.

I have never been able to get the resolution to display corrently on it. It's just a little too large for the screen.

My main question though...
I'm looking into building a new media center system and wanted to get some recommendations on hardware. I plan on using my current hard drives, so I'm not too worried about that. Mainly want a good mobo/sound card/graphics card suggestion. Thanks all!!

[jagabo]

TV's normally overscan the picture (you don't see the outer few percent on each side) to hide defects that often appear in broadcast signals (and with older CRT TVs other defects in the picture). Look to see if your HDTV has a non-overscan mode. It goes by different names, pixel-for-pixel, just scan, etc. But in my experience, 720p sets usually don't have the feature.

Of course, you've never seen the outer portion of the picture before, you just never knew it until you had an external reference. If you need to see the edges of the screen (Windows Desktop, subtitles, etc), and your TV doesn't have a non-overscan mode, many graphics cards have an "overscan compensation" setting. This adds a black border around the Desktop so that the black border is hidden by overscan rather than the edges of the Desktop.