Silly TV + media PC question

If I ensure my new TV...

can have overscan turned off via HDMI
has native resolution of 1920x1080
is 1080P

... can I simply change the resolution of my media PC* to 1920x1080p and off I go? Or will I have issues? Fuzzy fonts?

Where does 1:1 pixel mapping come in? Is this irrelevant in my above situation?

Thanks again

*(Nvidia 8600GTS PCI-e card)

As I understand it, no. You still have to get the video card's timings right for it to be a valid 1080p signal. Your video card's drivers might have such a setting built in, though.

That's the idea -- you bought an expensive (or not) television, but are simply using it as an oversized computer monitor. Nothing special there.

You will still have to get sound from the PC to your sound system.

And your PC will want significant horsepower to play any kind of fullscreen video at 1920x1080 resolution -- that's a lot of pixels to be continuously redrawing and moving around.

Cheers

I was thinking Core 2 Quad 2.8Ghz, 4GB RAM, Nvidia 8600GTS

http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8600.html

The reason its that card is that its recommended for playback of Blu-Ray DVDs. The 8800 cards have no vista drivers with PureVideo HD.

Would that spec cut it? Or would I need a beefier graphics card?

Don't bother with a beefier video card. The higher model ones are simply going to offer more 3D power for games, along with more noise, heat, and power draw. Looking at some reviews of HD-DVD and BluRay playback on the PC, the 8600 card seems to be one of the best for accelerating the decoding, reducing the CPU burden. Though, with the processor you are going for, such offloading probably isn't as necessary.

Thanks for the input guys!

I would recommend that you search AVSForum for the HDTV your interested in getting. If I had done more reading myself I would have known that my JVC 1080p HDTV didn't accept 1080p on the inputs nor can it disable overscan. If I was buying today I would make sure it can do 1:1 pixel mapping and disable overscan.

The fonts look really good om my TV @ 720p but @ 1080i they don't look as good. Watching HD content LOOKS GREAT. I didn't need to create any custom timings but I did have to enable overscan adjustment in the GeForce drivers so the edge of the desktop was on the screen.

As for the Video card make sure it is fanless. I would check the PureVideo HD specs from nvidia and get the best option from these at Newegg.

I was under the impression that you only have to worry about overscan if you, like me, purchase a rear-projection technology TV. LCDs and plasmas don't have that problem, do they?

I think that PC should have no problems at those resolutions. I had my 3.2GHz machine with a much older video card playing HD content just fine.

It depends on the TV and the input you use.

My LCD tv, when I plugged a computer into its DVI video port, worked great and gave me 100 percent screen with 1:1 pixel ratio. But some other TVs assume that you're plugging a consumer DVD player into that port and give you a bit of overscan if you do.

Thus, the need to know ahead of time which behavior your TV is going to give you.

All non-digital inputs will definitely give you some overscan, no matter which TV it is.

Thats the problem with slapping the HD label on everything. Processing power needed to decode a 1280x720 MPEG2 at 1.5 MBit and a 2 channel MP3 audio stream is wildly different then a 1920x1080 H.264/AVC at 30 Mbit with a 7.1 lossless audio stream, but both come under the "HD" label because people only look at resolution.

Is 1:1 pixel mapping a requirement even if I ensure both source and tv are capable of 1920x1080 (natively)? That IS 1:1, isn't it? I might have missed something again!

Attack... yes I will certainly check out the AVS Forum before handing over any cash. Thanks.

Yes, ensuring 1:1 is important. Think of it this way:

While the display may say 1080p capable, it's possible it doesn't have a 1:1 mode to ensure all 1920x1080 pixels are actually visible. Instead, it may be doing 1880x1040 actual visible pixels, meaning it's running a 40x40 pixel overscan.

LCDs and plasmas can also be tricky, since many use some off standard resolutions. The 26 inch LCDs we have here run at 1366x768 visible, and so we have to set the PCs attached to them to that odd resolution to get it to fill the screen and not scale. They will do 1280x720, bit it's clear it is scaled when looking at a windows desktop.

I understand your point, but I didn't state what kind of content I was playing. I was able to play content like that, though it pushed the envelope of the machine's capabilities and made the fans whir, so it wasn't preferable. Still, it could play it, which was my point that his machine shouldn't have much trouble.

Ok, let me show my ignorance once more! I understand that some displays have 24p for that 'true cinematic experience' and also I've read about 3:2 pulldown and how this causes motion blur. My question I guess is, does any of this matter if my source is a blu-ray DVD played on the computer? Can I correct this before it reaches the display or am I stuck with all the problems I see on forums with standalone DVDs?

Thanks once more

(I don't think I'll ever pick a tv at this rate - theres always something else )

Since the computer will be running at 1080p most likely the refresh will be set to 60 FPS. This is where the PureVideo HD software helps but still isn't perfect. This software has been much better at doing the 3:2 pull down / de-interlacing than most TV's integrated chipsets. Try finding a TV that both the inputs and display panel can operate @ 24, 30, 60, 72 and 120 FPS. The 120FPS is ideal since it can be divided by 24, 30 and 60 evenly. This way you don't have to change your refresh rate depending on the content type your trying to watch. There is also some PC software that will auto lock the refresh rate to the current rate of the playing video. It was very cool if your display could do the correct refresh rates. I can't remember the name but I will try to find it.

Try to find someone you know with the display technology that your thinking about getting and see if they will let you come over a watch a movie or connect a PC to it. I personally get headaches when watching DLP TV's for more than 2 hours.

What size display are your trying to get? Can you control the light in the room during the day? Do you need to hang it on a wall? Do you have a spending limit? The technology is changing so fast in the HDTV market you might want to think about spending way less and just getting something that does 720p and then upgrading in about a year.

Well, actually - I have a cheap s/h Dell GX240 with an FX5200 powering a 24" 1920x1200 display (£200) I only play SD pics but the video scaler in XV doesn't have a problem *scaling* video to that size. Playing HD video is another issue.

Oh, I bought a 26" LCD TV first - the picture sucked compared to the LCD monitor - and the monitor was about 70% of the TV price too.

Just FWIW.

Thanks for that. I spent a lot of time of the AVS Forums and people there have the Nvidia 8600GTS and you can select from various resolutions such as 1920x1080 24, 50, 60 etc. Why would you think it would be locked to 60? Good idea about the 120fps.

To answer your other questions, its a 40'' LCD I'm looking at, doesn't need to be wall mounted, light is 'ok' but not too special. Can spend about £1,000

How does this all work though? Say I play a BR DVD thats 1080/24 - do I tell the tv that its getting 24? Or does it sense it automatically?

I thought if the card is told to output a certain res/hz then it wouldn't matter what the source is (file on pc or BR via pc) as the card would change it before outputting it - or is that how that software works? Changing the FPS to suit the file to save me manually doing it? If so, see my question about if the tv can sense it.

Phew... thats my last questions for now!

LCD's running 120fps should automatically do a 5x on the 24fps to bump it up to 120.

My understanding is some HDTV's have panels that can only do one resolution and/or refresh rate even if the inputs can accept others and finding this information can be hard. My TV now has a * next to the HDMI ports and at the end of the page I see that * is Accepts 480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i signals and displays at 1080p. When I was looking at TV's to buy this * wasn't specs page.

The PC refresh rates are very complicated. We have the Desktop refresh rate,3D refresh rate and (opengl and DirectX). Now your video playback can use overlay mode and this is normally the same refresh rate as your desktop or it could be using VMR7 or VMR9 and this seems to depend on the playback software your OS and video drivers. So if you set your desktop to 1080p/60 most playback software will be converting everything to 60FPS before sending to to your HDTV and this is why 120 is the best option if the display only does on refresh rate.

The software that auto changes your refresh rate based on the video playing is called Reclock. It can be very complicated getting it to work.

If you can't control your light during the day you will need more contrast level and brightness or everything will be very dim / washed out.

Since your looking at the 40inch displays make sure you check out the OLED displays.

Thanks for the info

But a 40'' OLED?? Isn't that some way off? 11-inch is the biggest I've seen in Japan at ~$2000 plus the lifespan isn't too good.

A friend of mine did his PhD in OLED technology, or LEP as it was called then. The state of the art in those days, at least for blue pixels, was a lifetime of about five minutes -- at liquid nitrogen temperatures. I think it's pretty cool that only a decade or so later, people are selling (room-temperature!) TVs based on that technology.

Peter

Sorry, I didn't know they were still small, that will teach me to stop skim reading engadget. Check out the LED backlight LCD's.