hdx 18 vs envy 14 HDMI display issue

i recently purchased an envy 14. my previous laptop was a hdx 18. i primarily used it at home connected to my 52" lcd. it was inconvienent to take places so i decided to upgrade to an envy 14 to use at home on tv and it would be more portable.

heres the issue i have. the hdx has a gt130m and looks awesome when hooked up to tv. the envy has 5650 and it looks like it is being upscaled when hooked up to tv. ive played around with the catalyst control center trying to get it to display properly and have had no success. the hdx has a native 1080p screen and the envy has the brightview 1366 x 768. when i go to display when the envy is hooked up is says that it is displaying at 1080p when it looks upscaled to me.

just wondering if anyone has any ideas on this. ive tried all settings that i know of to get it to display properly. i used the same hdmi cable with both laptops.

 

1) Please change the topic name to a more descriptive one, if you can (can you? I'm not sure if we are allowed to change topic names...)

2) I have never had any issues with hooking up my E14 to TV via HDMI. Looked quite crisp, and it was full 1080p. What does the Windows' "Screen Resolution" screen say? Can Your TV report what is the resolution of the video it is currently playing? If they say "1920x1080" I don't think there's any reason not to believe that.

3) Don't think laptop's screen resolution has anything to do with external displays. You might try upgrading Your drivers, there's link to Catalyst 11.2 somewhere here in the forums.

4) Try playing with Your TV's settings? Maybe in the past You've tuned them so that it looks great with Your hdx, but right nowt hey need a few tweaks to make Envy's video signal look good?

 

I changed the thread title a bit by adding HDMI display issue.

Also, you might want to try an HDMI 1.3 cable.

 

there's some hidden settings you have to mess with.


not sure where said hidden settings are if you're on Catalyst 11.1 or 11.2

basically go to desktops and displays in the catalyst control center.

right click on the tv that should be there (there should be a laptop screen also) and pick configure.

there will be some options in there to setup 1080p and also some scaling optiosn so it fills up the screen (since the drivers like to auto-underscan for some reason)

 

hey guys thanks for the responses. ive tried some of your recommendations with no success. im using an hdmi 1.3 cable. i upgraded to latest drivers, i was on the drivers from hp website, and that didnt seem to help anything. i tried all options i could find in ccc, from changing the pixel format to lcd overdrive to add all the hdtv profiles. seemed to still look the same. my tv says that it is displaying at 1920 x 1080 as does windows. i also adjusted my tvs setting and seemed to get a little bit better picture but still not quite like the hdx.

it seems to me to be more in text than in pictures and video. i am a new user to windows 7 as ive been using vista since it came out. (probably one of the three people on earth that actually like it, lol) perhaps it may be a windows 7 thing that i havent figured out yet.

the hdmi 1.3 cable that i have is a cheap one as my "good" ones are all older ones. may buy another better quality 1.3 cable to try. my only other option is to try the display port and see how that looks. once again, thanks for the help

 

hmm. So what, is everything too tiny?

HDTVs are like that at 1080p.

Especially large ones.

You could mess with scaling in the ease of accessability center but otherwise I dunno what else you can do besides just set it at a smaller resolution or something.

 

no its not that at all. best way i could describe it is like ink bleeding on a page. the hdx has nice clean crisp lines in text and graphics where as the envy seems to have a fuzz coming off the text. its not a night and day difference nor is it that bad. i would probably never have noticed if i hadnt been using the hdx for the last two years. i guess that it really bothers me because i have become used to how good the hdx looks. its probably something that i could get used to, but im thinking of just keeping both laptops now and keeping the hdx permanantly hooked up to tv, seems a waste of the beautiful 1080 screen on that thing though. i usually have internet explorer zoomed in to 150% when using it on tv so small text is not a problem.

heres another way to describe it. i d/l a lot of 720 and 1080 mkv. i think when i watching a 720 the screen flashes as its changing resolution. while watching if you were to right click in windows media player the menu that pops up will look a bit fuzzy as compared to how the right click menu typically looks. that fuzzy is how the envy looks all the time.

 

huh. I dunno. maybe it's just how ati handles hdmi output.

 

If text is the issue, you need to reconfigure the text using win 7's text utility. Search for Cleartype in the windows start bar.

I can confirm I power my 24' monitor in 1080p with the envy and it looks great. Double check that you are running off of the ati card, then check its settings, make sure things like filtering are set to programs default and that you are not forcing any kind of settings onto the windows default environment.

 

tryed the cleartype and it changed things but still not what i wanted. im definitely using the ati card as my envy has the i7. i did notice a few things though and have decided that its just my tv and the way it receives the signal from the 130 and 5650

when the hdx is hooked up and i press display i get:
1920 x 1080/60htz
scene: general
wide: normal

when the envy is hooked up and i press display i get:

1080p hd | 60 htz
scene: general
wide: full

there is no option with the envy to put the wide mode to normal. also the suttle difference in the way it displays the 1080 leads me to belive that my tv just reads the signals a little different and what i see on the screen is waht i get. the intel/nvidia fanboy in me wants to blame it on ati but in the end i think my tv may be the culprit. the envy doesnt look bad at all just not as good as the hdx when ive been using it for a couple of years and am used to it. ill just look at it as a good excuse to grab a envy 14 sb with usb 3.0

 

Try changing the direction of the subpixels in Catalyst

edit: the name for this is "pixel format"

 

Use the mini display port instead of the hdmi I remember reading somewhere about someone having fuzzy text issues with the hdmi.

 

Hmmmm, text you say? Well, I'm not that much of a techie, but you think this might help?

1. Right click on empty space on desktop.
2. Click on Personalize
3. Click on Display on the left of the screen.
4. Choose the 100 option (small display) and see how it looks.

By the way its Windows 7, not sure if Vista has this, but good luck. I know this may not help your situation, but maybe a small chance it will. Let us know how it works for ya.

KJ

 

tried this with no luck, still same fuzziness to it

ive tried all 4 pixel options with no luck either. i just left it on the one that looks the best

 

bought a mini display port adapter and had no luck with that either. it may just be the way the ati sends the signal to my tv (sony xbr9). in the end ill just be keeping the hdx 18 as a permanant hookup to my tv, like a big desktop. just ordered a ssd for it to since im keeping it. probably get rid of the envy and get a new one when/if the sandy bridge, usb3 ones are announced

 

I have exactly the same problem driving Benq ML2241 from my laptop's HD 5650 via HDMI.

When Windows 7 is starting up (the screen with the assembling logo), it sets the correct resolution:
ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting

but as soon as I get to the login screen, it switches to this:
ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting

No matter how I tweak the ATI's or the monitor's over-/under-scan, I can't get a clean picture.

This is definitely an ATI driver fault as the card is able to put out the correct signal, only the driver is not able to set it up while in Windows.

 

hate to bump and old thread but i finally solved this problem. i figured it was something simple that i was overlooking because video looked awesome, it was just windows explorer, internet explorer, office, ect that looked bad. saw a post on another thread that said to change the name of the input on the tv from hdmi 1 to pc and voila. i had named mine envy 14.

if anyone thinks that their pc hooked up through hdmi to lcd tv doesnt look as good as it should then give this a try. it worked for me.