Solved! Hooked up my 26" HDTV to PC but...?

nommy124

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Jul 21, 2010
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Today i hooked up my 26" VIZIO HDTV to PC with HDMI but the desktop and text looks jagged and fuzzy.. but when i played a 1080p movie, it looked amazing, I have a powerful graphics card so i know thats not a problem. i have tried Cleartype and DPI text scaling but both didnt do much,
 
Solution
is the tv 1920x1080?
-if not that explains the lack of clarity

in the tv menu is "sharpen image" or other image enhancements on?
-if so this counters anti-aliasing, try disabling sharpen

does text look aliased on an lcd monitor? (unless you dont have one)
-if you have a monitor you could always compare the two like i list at the bottom..

a bigger screen with the same resolution of a smaller screen will always look less crisp due to the fact that the pixels are larger.
-you can offset this by sitting a bit further back

you are correct that your graphics card should not be an issue. it could easily be a display setting or the fact that you are sitting too close to a larger screen.

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this following bit is unsubstatiated and is...
is the tv 1920x1080?
-if not that explains the lack of clarity

in the tv menu is "sharpen image" or other image enhancements on?
-if so this counters anti-aliasing, try disabling sharpen

does text look aliased on an lcd monitor? (unless you dont have one)
-if you have a monitor you could always compare the two like i list at the bottom..

a bigger screen with the same resolution of a smaller screen will always look less crisp due to the fact that the pixels are larger.
-you can offset this by sitting a bit further back

you are correct that your graphics card should not be an issue. it could easily be a display setting or the fact that you are sitting too close to a larger screen.

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this following bit is unsubstatiated and is only my personal opinion. i have found no articles or references to support this as of yet.. but from personal experience believe there is something amiss here.. so take this with a grain of salt.

i have a 20.1 viewsonic lcd monitor @ 1600x1200 and a 40 sony lcd tv @ 1920x1080. using the same programs with the same text sizes i've directly compared the two in the past. sitting at ideal distances text most definitely is harder to read on the lcdtv.

i've adjusted every setting, mode, option available. text is definitely more blurry and this is not due to just the larger pixels. even sitting closer to the monitor i still have to bump text sizes up +20% in some applications for them to be comfortable to read. now granted i don't have perfect vision but sitting in a location where text is the same effective size (sitting further back from the big 40, closer to the 20 until they look the same) i still notice a difference when it comes to text. image quality, movies, games are excellent on both.

in short, i'm not sure what is going on here but yes i do notice the same sort of effect myself. however, since the pc is mainly used for media (games, movies) and less for applications (web, office, etc) everything works out fine for me.
 
Solution