HDMI question..for dummies

I plugged in my Sony Z12 into my TV with the HDMI...screen came up on my TV, but it was too large. How do I format it to fit the screen of the TV better?

Also, playing a movie on my Z12 via VLC player did not show up on the TV....video portion of the VLC player was black on the TV.

Thanks!!

 

If you go to Vaio Control Panel, there is a section there for display settings. Within that section are HDMI settings. When you have your Z plugged into the TV, there will be an option to select that lets you size the screen to fit the whole desktop.

Now I think you probably lose some pixels doing that. Others have insisted that there is an overscan setting on the TV that causes this. The trick is to find the overscan setting on your TV and turn it off and that will fix the problem. I was never able to find an overscan off/on on my Panasonic TV.

 

you may also need to toggle off your laptop display and external only (Fn+f7 ?). Then there should be some sizing adjustments or overscan setting in your video card control panel.

 

couple other Win7 tricks: try Win-P (pulls up multi-display chooser)
and Win-Left/Right arrow (moves windows from monitor to monitor)

As for the resolution/scaling, try looking in Vaio Control Center -> Display -> HDMI Settings

 

Is it a 720p model or 1080p?

Most 1080p LCD and plasma TVs have an option to defeat the internal scaler and display the input data pixel for pixel. But they don't all call it the same thing. Look for a "PC" display mode. If it doesn't have that, look for "dot by dot" or "full pixel" options somewhere in the menus. These options might be restricted to certain display modes.

Also, 720p TVs are less likely to have the option. But you might also be able to find a screen size setting that controls the amount of overscan.

 

I have a 1080p Panasonic, and it was the Overscan option that solved this for me, I'm at work so can't remember where in the Panasonic menu's the option was. But it was definitely in the TV menu, NOT the computer display menu, that I finally got things looking correct.

 

but i'm pretty sure the Z has a correction for TV's overscan anyway, in the place I said above, on the adjust tab. That's what I do for the 37" 1080p LG in the hotel I stay in every week. It makes your effective resolution lower though so the pixels don't spill over the edges. Not a huge deal to me since my Z isn't fHD and I don't have bluray drive.

 

Thanks. I have a 1080p TV. I'll have to look for the things you mentioned, but I wasn't able to find the options in the past. I do keep the display on the "Just" mode rather than "Full," "Zoom," or the other options...so it could be that the overscan option isn't displayed when using that display mode. I'll have to look into that too.

@memnoch, if you happen to have a chance to check that setting on your panasonic, I'd be very appreciative (sorry for the thread hijack).