resolutions & refresh rates should be set for Sony 32" Widescreen?

[Pete the Painter]

Hi,

I spent over 4 hrs last night browsing the forums, mainly the green button, looking for a definative answer to this question without any luck.

I have the setup as described as below and I want to output my TV signal to my Sony CRT which is a 100mhz capable TV.

I don't use a TFT or VGA to the PC, its strictly as a media centre hooked up to TV via S-Video lead and optical to 5.1 Sound

So .....What should I set my screen resolution to? Should I "Add" a custom res in the advanced option of the settings?

There seem to be so many people achieving this in different ways, some successfull and some not

I have tried some custom settings which either enable the pan and scan mode or when viewed on TV or in the settings area <---Pool balls and chaulk, Give an impression of squashed oval faces or balls

The TV can be a pain because you have the Viewing options of "Wide, Zoom, 4:3, 14:9 or Smart" Don't like having the scores etc cropped of the screen

Can somebody please help here and get something on the FAQ's ?

I would really like to have my TV output in an acceptable way to widescreen

PS. I am going to be hooking my Thompson Freeview box up from the bedroom soon, will this have any effect on what I want to achieve? Is Freeview broadcast in widescreen unlike anologue TV?

Thanks


Hauppauge PVR-500 PAL - MCE 2005 - Asus A8Nsli deluxe - CPU3000 939 - 512 corsair value select
GFX 6600gt XFX PIC-e GFX 71.84 - PSU Tagen 480
Pioneer 109 DVD-RW - Aopen Chameleon DVD-ROM
Seagate 40gig Sata System Drive - Maxtor Diamondmax 10 sata 200gig Storage

[schmunk]

1066*600 or 1366*768 (or the nearest equivalents)

Use 'Wide' on your TV - this gives a proper 16*9 with the correct input.

[iranu]

So .....What should I set my screen resolution to? Should I "Add" a custom res in the advanced option of the settings?

Whilst I haven't tried this I think it will work. 848x480 is a standard definition plasma widescreen res. Experiment!

Your 6600gt should use nvidia's "Purevideo" for scaling too.

You may also want to look at a program called DScaler It's free. It's a scaling program which will allow you to output to a TV via SVideo.

Note: You may need to install the WDM drivers for you TV card that are compatible with DScaler.

Also look at another program called PowerStrip. There's a free trial period, but it's more difficult to set up apparantly.

Look at TheaterTek too.

For info like this I usually turn to AVForums as there is a good knowledge base there.

[Pete the Painter]

Tried various resolutions this evening, I seem to get best resuts with 720x480 rather than 720x576.

The thing is though I'm on a PAL setup.

But at 720x480 when you go through the media centre settings the pool balls are round but the pic before doesnt take up the full screen. But at 720x576 it takes up the correct size of the screen but the balls are oval