I Don't get it..

Ok, I have an m1530 hooked up to my 24" Monitor. It really pretty damn good hooked up to it via VGA..

But when my notebook up to it using HDMI, it actually looks WORSE. Text becomes harder to read and things just don't look as clear.

Could it be the poor quality of the cable? Or the HDMI port on either my m1530 or the monitor?

Thanks

 

Try adjusting the resolution. How long is the cable?

 

I lowered the resolution to 1440 x 900 via HDMI and it looked ok, but not amazing. The cable is rather long at 15 feet. You think that could be it?

At 1920 x 1200 VGA > HDMI, which doesn't make sense to me.

 

Longer cables generally will have lower quality. So anything over 8 feet will start to deteriorate in quality.

 

I don't think so.. We tried it on my friends shorter HDMI cable and it still looked noticeably worse than the VGA.

 

That's nonsense. It's HDMI, ie digital, there isn't a "deterioration in quality". It'll either work or it wont.

 

There are no reasons why HDMI shouls always have to look better than VGA. It all depends on how well your monitor handles each type of signal. Also try and match the native resolution of the monitor to see if that's any better.

 

I use 16ft HDMI(10 bucks from Ebay) cable on my M1330 on a 1080P 47" LCD TV, and works pretty well.

 

Maybe its the quality of the screen itself ?

 

There's signal deterioration in both digital and analog cables. Just much less so in digital ones.

Here's a good article on digital v. analog. http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/34579/122868.html

Summary: Which one is better depends on your equipment, TV, laptop, and cables.

 

It's definitely a resolution issue. What is the screen's native resolution? Set it at that. If that doesn't help, well... cheap screen?

 

A digital signal may deteriorate but this will result in no signal output, what it wont do is give a poorer output. Like I said it either works or it doesn't, you get a signal or you dont.

 

Not true. Read the linked article in my last post.

A digital signal can, just like analog, lose only bits and pieces instead of the entire signal. Thus you can get a bad digital signal. It's not all black and white.

 

Another thing to bear in mind is to check exactly what resolutions the monitor's HDMI input can handle. Most HDMI inputs only handle SDTV/HDTV resolution Video signals not PC resolutions.

 

Your link just confirms what I've said. A digital signal with errors leads to signal loss or dropouts. It doesn't produce a "poorer" image in the same way as analog does and it certainly doesn't result in the kind of thing the the OP is experiencing. And anyway you need to be looking at cable lengths in excess of 10 mtrs or more to start to see these kinds of issues.

 

The screen's native resolution is 1920 x 1200.

 

My 24" monitor is hooked up to my brand me m1530. The monitor can most certainly handle a PC resolution, especially since it IS a PC monitor and it's native resolution is 1920 x 1200.

 

I still don't really know what it is. But I'm starting to think it just has something to do with the fact that HDMI is a much newer technology and it is kind of a budget monitor (it's a Westinghouse). And really does just depend on everything.

 

I think you've missed my point. I said its likely that the HDMI wont handle a PC resolution signal, even though your monitor will, which is why it doesn't look so good compared to your VGA input. Does your monitor have DVI, you could try and get an HDMI -> DVI cable to see if that looks better as DVI utilises PC resolutions OK

 

Why wouldn't it handle a PC resolution signal via HDMI?

And no, it doesn't have a DVI input.

 

Read my earlier post. I've already explained that the HDMI is designed for HD Video and as such, most screens (TVs and Monitors) will only accept video resolutions via the HDMI input not PC resolutions. There are always exceptions to the rule.

Check the specs for your monitor as it should say exactly what resolutions are handled by its HDMI input.

 

I checked the manual and it says it can do HDMI at 480i/P 720P and 1080i/P. Maybe that's why it looked worse, since I was displaying a 1920 x 1200 resolution, a 10:16 format and not 1080i or 1080p, a 9:16.

I'll try that and see if it looks any better, I doubt it, but we'll see.

Nope, didn't work. Still looks noticeably worse than VGA.

 

Try what exactly?

 

Before I had the HDMI cable running at 1920 x 1200, but I looked in my manual and it said it doesn't support that resolution via HDMI. The highest it said it supported was 1080p, so I switched it to that and it still looked just as bad.

 

Sorry, I'm confused

Are you saying your set your monitor input to be 1080p or you changed your PC's display resolution to be 1920x1080 and then compared this with VGA at that same res?

 

Is there some sort of 'overscan' feature on? I've had to tweak the settings on my M1530 to get it to display just right on my 46" HDTV.

The M1530 can output different (i.e. non 1080, 720, etc..) resolutions, as it tried doing that with my HDTV. It's essentially a different connector for DVI.

The monitor itself may try to convert whatever comes into the DVI port to fit 720 or 1080 on its screen.

 

He's not using DVI, it's HDMI or VGA only.

I think he's wasting his time tbh. HDMI is primarily designed for Video input not PCs and unless he was using an LCD TV with the ability to get one-to-one pixel mapping he's never going to get good PC desktop scaling via HDMI on that monitor of his.

 

Yeah, I gave up, I'm just using VGA now.

I changed my computer to run the monitor at 1920 x 1080 (1080p) using HDMI because that's the highest resolution my monitor supports via HDMI.

 

I thought as much, the problem is that as your monitor's native resolution isn't 1920x1080 the 1080p signal is then rescaled again leading to the poor desktop results.

 

But my monitor has a 1080p option. I have my Xbox 360 hooked up to the monitor at 1920 x 1080 and that looks great too, so I still don't think it really makes any sense. I don' think it's scaling it when it does 1920 x 1080.

 

Is your 360 hooked up with HDMI?

 

Trust me, it is scaling. Anything passed to your monitor will be scaled to it's native resolution (that's how LCD panels work) and poor scaling for PC graphics/fonts will be more apparent than video/games graphics.

 

No, I bought the VGA cable for it so it could do 1920 x 1080. I am using the VGA cable.

Ok, that actually makes a lot of sense. That explains why the VGA looks good and the HDMI looks worse. It must scale the HDMI signal very poorly.

 

The video format, if I understand correctly, is the same for DVI and HDMI (hence the HDMI to DVI cable...)

The computer should be able to output whatever the heck you want. The restriction is usually on the TV/display side. I had a HDTV with HDMI that would not allow anything but a certain few resolutions.

If the HDMI is being output at the native resolution of the monitor, there should be no scaling, unless you have something like 'overscan' or one of those other features on. When I plugged in my HDTV to my 1530, I had to go to the nvidia control panel and tell it not to zoom my desktop. After that, the video was just fine.

Unless something is actually wrong with your monitor, there is very little reason as to why this shouldn't work with the correct settings.

I'll try hooking my 1530 up to a LCD to see if I can somehow produce the same results.

 

HDMI can usually only output Video resolutions, whereas DVI can handle PC resolutions as well. The OP has a PC monitor (with a PC native resolution), not a HDTV, therefore anything coming out of his HDMI input is being scaled. Please take time to read the posts properly.

 

Did you ever actually check or get any results?