Re: black frame around picture

From: Stephen Neal (stephen.neal_at_nospam.please.as-directed.com)
Date: 01/17/05 

Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 00:35:40 -0000

Leos98 wrote:
> Hi!!!
> I just went out and purchased a PNY GeForce FX 5700 LE Video Card.
> After installation I can say that it looks great. It has taken away
> the error in MCE about files needed to play DVD away and I can watch
> movies now. However, in my LCD TV attached to my PC as a secondary
> display via S-Video, still see a black frame around the picture. In
> other words I haven't been able to see a full picture in my TV. I can
> say that before with my old card, the black frame was thicker than
> what it is now, but I want to get rid of it. I have played with the
> resolutions but the result is nothing. Has anyone gone thru the same
> type of problem???

It is a standard "issue" with many TV-out displays.

The black bars are there because the TV-out is compensating for "overscan" -
where normal TVs don't actually display the whole TV picture, instead the
extreme left/right/top/bottom of the picture are lost into the edges of the
TV screen. If the TV wasn't overscanned you might see black edges on your
normal TV picture, or closed captioning/subtitle data at the top.

Windows, unfortunately, puts most of the important bits of the user
interface (Start button, system tray, Maximised windows Min/Max/Close
buttons etc.) at the extreme edges of the desktop. If there wasn't overscan
compensation (i.e. the TV out feed shrunk slightly so it is all still
visible on the TV screen) then you wouldn't be able to use your PC from the
TV-out feed, as you wouldn't be able to see the START button etc. However
when you want to watch full-screen video they are rather annoying...

You may find that TV Tool (a 3rd party "tuning" utility) may help you reduce
the black bars size a bit.

Better still, if your TV is an LCD type, and has a VGA, DVI or HDMI input
then you might be able to connect your PC using this type of connection
instead, and get much better video quality, and reduced/no black bars.

Steve