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    How to stretch screen to edge of LCD (and get rid of small black bars)?

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by MS1Guy, Jan 18, 2012.

  1. MS1Guy

    MS1Guy Newbie

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    Right now I've got my M17X R2 hooked up to a Toshiba LCD TV, but it doesn't stretch the screen to take up 100% of the LCD - on each side of the screen, I have small 1/2" wide black bars. The Catalyst control center only allows you to scale the whole screen by %, but I need to scale height and width separately, and also I need to move the screen to the right a bit, because right now it goes all the way to the left, but on the right there's a black bar. How do I fix this and maximize my viewing area? Thanks guys.
     
  2. Stealth55

    Stealth55 Notebook Consultant

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    theres a option on CCC called overscan increase it.
     
  3. PsiPr0

    PsiPr0 Notebook Evangelist

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    BAM!! Exactly! Thread should be closed now. I had to figure this out myself because I had the same issue when I got my Alienware. I thought "HDMI is HDMI", guess not. Even outputting 1920x1080 leaves black bars on the sides and top and bottom of the image (weird), but overscan lets you fix that.
     
  4. MS1Guy

    MS1Guy Newbie

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    Read my post again - overscan increases both height + width, and I need to increase the height a little more than the width. I also need to shift the screen to the right, because right now on the left it's perfect and on the right there's a bar.
     
  5. PsiPr0

    PsiPr0 Notebook Evangelist

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    After making sure the external display resolution was 1920x1080 and using overscan, I was able to eliminate the bars completely on my Vizio TV At home. Not sure if you can go past the overscan limits to eliminate the 1/2" bars.
     
  6. YodaGoneMad

    YodaGoneMad Notebook Deity

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    I don't have ATI so I can't help you on that front. However, often this is a setting on your TV that should be change. What you want is to put your TV into "just scan" mode. What it is probably doing right now is trying to auto scale, and the different timings from the computer are throwing it off. In just scan mode it will just take each pixel of data and put it on-screen in the corresponding pixel with no extra processing.