Can't get clean picture over HDMI -- what is broken?

[Superphilipp]

Hi there!

I have been having problems with my setup for some time. I hope somebody here will recognise the symptoms and maybe be able to tell me what part of the chain is causing this.

I am using an over 5 years old Samsung 32R32B 32 inch LCD TV (1366x768 native resolution) hooked up to my PC. My video card is a Radeon HD 4670 with regularly updated Catalyst drivers. I am running Windows 7 x64 Professional.

In the past I have connected the TV via VGA (15 pin connector). Once I found a decent cable, the picture was flawless and beautiful. I set my resolution to 1366x768 and set it up pixel-perfect on the TV.

However I recently bought a Blu-Ray drive for my PC, so obviously I have to connect my TV via HDMI now, because of HDCP. But using HDMI I have never been able to get as beautiful a picture on my TV as I had before.

My TV will accept 1280x720, 1366x768 and 1920x1080 no problem, but none of them look the way you would expect a digital video signal to look on an LCD (i.e. the way it looks on my primary PC screen, which is hooked up via DVI-D). No matter what resolution I choose, or what pixel format or overscan settings I set up in my driver panel, I cannot get rid of these two issues:

a) The picture is strongly blurred,

b) Strands of colourful artifact are dancing over certain banded areas and on smooth lines.



The blurriness I can sort of combat with my TV's "sharpen" feature, but that of course causes halos and all sorts of new artifacts that I feel I shouldn't have to put up with. After all, a digital video signal should just be displayed perfectly, pixel-by-pixel, as long as it is in the native resolution ... right?



As you can imagine, I am pretty miffed. If it weren't for stupid HDCP I could just keep using my VGA cable, but obviously that is not an option.

Does anybody recognise this? Is my cable bad? Is it a driver compatibility issue? Am I overlooking somthing in the setup?

Thank you very much!

[jagabo]

Does your Samsung have a "just scan" option? That's its pixel for pixel mode. That with 1366x768 should give a clear picture. Also, be sure your graphics card isn't set up with overscan compensation. I don't know about the other artifacts you're seeing. Can you change the computer's output to RGB vs. YPbPr? Try a different HDMI cable? I have a Samsung LNT-4660 (1080p) hooked up to an HTPC and get a perfect pixel-for-pixel display. I used to have a cheap 19" Samsung LCD TV with an odd resolution (1440x900?) which was incapable of pixel-for-pixel mapping via HDMI but it didn't have any of the artifacts yours is showing.