A few PC to HDTV issues

Doronron

Hey Guys,

I'm in the process of rigging my first media center setup. I am working to get my computer and my TV to play nice with each other, and it's not quite behaving the way I'd like.

Tech Specs:
Sharp 42" LC42SB45U (1080p)

Connected via HDMI -> DVI -> Mini DVI to:

20" 2GHz Intel iMac
2GB RAM
ATI Radeon X1600 onboard (ATI Catalyst 8.11 under WinXP)
OS: OSX 10.5 with Windows XP SP3 Bootcamped

I am dealing with three issues:

OSX:

• I can set the TV at the primary display and it looks sharp. However, I cannot find a way to tell the iMac to sleep the internal monitor. This is an extended monitor setup, not clone.

Windows XP:

• I can set the TV as the primary display at 1920x1080, but the screen is rather grainy. Fonts are poorly rendered even when setting them to extra large.
• Windows games when not set to a 16:9 resolution will not go full screen. It leaves a black border of empty screen around the active application. I'm trying to make all games take up the whole screen even when running them at 800x600 or 640x480 (such as Diablo 2 or Diablo 1).

Online research for the OSX issue has pretty much directed me to scenarios with no external monitors.

Online research for the Windows XP issues state I can configure Catalyst to run at the TV's resolution (hopefully solving both problems), but I'm not certain the right display configuration for it. Catalyst warns of damaging the TV if the wrong display is used.

Any advice on how to get my configuration problems fixed?

Doronron

Update on my progress. I have resolved the screen size problem with games under the WinXP boot on my iMac with this TV. Under the Catalyst Control Center Options in the DTV/DVI section, there is a scale check box you can activate and then choose the scale type you want. This allows games with resolutions that are not 16:9 or are fixed at a set value to take up the full screen. Low res textures are pretty ugly, though.

Another thing I've found is that in a game, the TV draws geometry with almost a white outline around everything. This is effected by the degree of sharpness the TV menu will let the user set. I am experimenting with it to get something I like.

I have a small workaround for the fuzzy/grainy font issue in the actual desktop. I can set the DPI for the desktop to 120, then tell the system to use very large fonts. However, some applications ignore these settings (the catalyst control center, for instance) and continue to display tiny, badly drawn fonts. The Apple desktop is very clean and quite easy to read. I am comparing the display setting OSX used to what ATI Catalyst has available under WinXP to see what I can achieve.

Still nothing I can do about setting OSX into a clamshell mode, though.

I'll continue to post as I find solutions, if anyone is following this.