Full screen S-Video out on Vista with 8600M?

Well, I finally got around to testing the 8600M S-Video output of my DV9500t and it's like a flashback to the days of my old Geforce 3.

I'm connecting to a regular, standard-def TV and all I want to do is fill the screen with the desktop or video image. As it is now, I have a black border all the way around the desktop image.

On my 2 year old notebook (with Geforce 6800), I can adjust the S-Video output to enlarge the screen to fill up to the edge of the TV.

In the Nvidia Control panel help, it says "From the NVIDIA Control Panel navigation tree pane, under Video & Television, click Adjust screen size and position to open the associated page." But there is no "Adjust Screen Size" setting in the control panel.

I've tried various drivers (163.44, 163.71, 163.75) and none of them have that setting. From my searches, it looks like this basic feature just isn't included in the Vista drivers.

Please, someone let me know if there's a work around to fill the TV screen with the 8600M S-Video output. Is there an older driver that works? Or a regedit change? Or maybe third party software?

This is a huge letdown for a "Media Center" notebook with DVD and HDTV features. My old notebook has no trouble doing this and movie watching and Tivo streaming are one of my main uses for the new notebook. This could be a deal-breaker for me. I'm definitely not going to wait past my return period for nvidia to come out with basic drivers.

I hope someone can help. Thanks.

 

Well, I made some progress by going back to the HP Support site Nvidia driver. That driver (7.15.11.145) outputs full screen to the TV without a black frame around the edges. So the full screen output setting is obviously hidden in the driver somewhere, but is not available in the control panel.

It's a step in the right direction, but unfortunately, it still does not have any advanced settings to manually increase the size on the S-Video or adjust screen position (functions which are described in the help file). I still need that sizing function to hide the white static (line 21) on the top of the screen for some video sources.

I am also encountering an issue with tv-out color space and the nvidia drivers. On a wide screen video, I can see the main video image, surrounded by 1. in-video thin black bars (ok), 2. then dark Media Player black bars (good), 3. then a third set of grey bars (bad) on the top and bottom of the screen. I have tried tweaking all the nvidia and Media Player settings I can find, but I'm unable to get rid of (or blend) the outermost grey bars.


By the way, the previous drivers mentioned in my original post were the laptop2go drivers, which otherwise worked well for 3D. Another problem with the laptop2go drivers is that the FN-F4 key to switch displays caused rundll crashes.


Anyway, the HP drivers have given me a barely tolerable full-screen image, even though there are still some problems (grey bars). I'm disappointed that the S-Video output and missing control panel adjustments are a bit of a downgrade from my 2 year old notebook with an older nvidia card.

 

I tried the S-video out on my standard tv aswell.. didnt work very well. I couldnt change the resolution and it didnt fill up the whole tv screen and color is sorta messed up. Ive had no luck fixing it and gave up in the end.

Let me know if you fix this problem

 

Yeah the output i get from my Dv9575T is just awful, also interested in any solutions to this.

 

The more I look into this issue, the more I'm amazed that Nvidia can get away with this. It sounds like this issue has been around for nearly a year now and everyone with an 8-series card and Vista is out of luck for this basic function that has been in older cards on XP for years.

You can send Nvidia your comments here: NVIDIA Windows Vista Graphics Driver Bug Report. Maybe if they get enough requests, they will restore this feature to the Vista driver control panel.


I looked at my 7.15.11.145 driver S-video output again. It turns out that it's only filling the TV screen horizontally, so the extra set of grey bars on top and bottom is underscan. On my Geforce 6800 I could increase the size of the TV output a couple notches to get rid of those bars and fully fill the screen. I adjusted the TV brightness and contrast along with the Nvidia video settings to darken the grey bars a bit, but it's still noticable and it doesn't fill the screen.

 

Im filing a report on that link as we speak

Ive spend hours trying to figure it out. When i first tried it i was so dissapointed at the quality of the color and picture and also the fact that i couldnt change the resolution or the scaling for the tv. Everything seems to be locked in as is.

I tried changing the video format to PAL & NTSC on both my lappy and tv with no luck with the color issue