The text looks jagged and is annoying to read. Is there anything that can be done about this, or is it not a high enough resolution really? I thought the text is expandable pretty much to any size, so I don’t really understand why it would look so bad. Even the text supplied by Windows and not over the internet looks bad.
Are you running at the native 1920x1080 resolution? Also, are you using a digital connection like HDMI? Finally, what size is the screen? 1080p is reasonable for a 20" screen but will look jaggy at 40"–depending on how far you sit from the screen.
Text is emphatically not scalable. In fact, text is one of the least scalable things there is, due to its sensitivity to minor changes in shape. special scaling algorithms have been developed specifically to make text scaling not absolutely shit.
That said, I’m not sure why your TV is being bad. I’ve seen laptops hooked up to gigantic 40+ inch 1920x1080 screens with absolutely no problem with the text. The aliasing is usually really minor. Are you sure your resolution is correctly set?
1920x1080, yes. 32" Samsung using HDMI, out of Acer tower, OEM video . Could a different card make any difference? I’m using it at a “normal” 18" or so, I admit.
Are you sure that you running 1920x1080 resolution on your video card and that your TV is natively 1920x1080 and not 1280x720 (labeled as 1080 ready)? Scaling would be the obvious culprit here.
1080p at 32" is a little big, but it shouldn’t be that bad. OEM video should be fine. As JKilez says, make sure you’re really at that res.
If you have a camera with a decent macro setting (even many cell phone cameras will do this), try taking a picture of some text at close range (close enough to see the red-green-blue subpixels) and posting it here.
Back when 32" 1080p TVs cost six grand, I used one as a CAD monitor. It was shit as a monitor, but it was laying around the warehouse and my boss was too cheap to spend another grand or so on a proper monitor for me until he found a customer he could ditch the “demo” Runco on.
Windows does suggest 720, I see, but everything got so big on the screen it was unusable.
I am currently using two Sceptre 32" TVs as my monitors. They work perfectly, if you do this:
- Connect them to the computer through the standard VGA cable
- Use the “pixel for pixel” mode on the TV
Can’t help you with Samsungs though. Seems Sceptre built that particular TV with it being used as a monitor in mind.
Are you really close to the monitor? I use a 37" 1080p with a PC in the living room, sit about 8 feet away, and it’s gorgeous. I read and post to the Dope on it all the time. I use Firefox and enlarge the text on almost everything I read and it all looks fine. Chrome looks crappy, I don’t know what’s up with their font but it doesn’t look nice so I stick with Firefox.
Anyway, if you think it will help, I’ll check the settings when I get home and post them here. I do use an HDMI connection, and just whatever graphics card came with the cheap PC. I don’t remember tweaking anything, I’m pretty sure the computer just detected the TV and set parameters accordingly.
I am using a TV ATM, it has no idea of ‘act nicely for computer use’.
Well my video card driver has a property under “panel output” of "Centre " rather than “scale to fit”. “Centre” also allows “overscan off”
This means that the driver is aware that panels make a mess of fonts when scaling, and I use the largest mode that fits, with the output centered in the middle of the display.
That is how i get no scaling AND no overscan on a TV …
large-format monitors display text horribly via HDMI. it is a notorious problem (google ‘hdmi text looks bad.’)
if your tv has a VGA in, try that and look at how much better the text looks.
there are little adjustments you can make in your tv as well as scaling and calibrating the text via Windows.
i am using a 39" 1080p tv as a monitor and just had to futz with all the settings until the text looked bearable. again, it looks perfect via VGA but HDMI is a mess. it’s a trade off for other quality i reckon.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/365266-33-hdmi-text-fuzzy-works-fine
The only other setting I can think of to make sure is good is the one on your graphics card. I have just the run-of-the-mill Nvidia GeForce that automatically did native 1080p settings, but maybe yours needs to be changed? Sorry, I’m not that great with computers, but I’ll try to help with tweaking your settings to match mine if I can.
Unless the text on mine is also crappy and I just am used to it or something, you tell me:
Six feet away
About two feet away
And a couple inches away
I have the display enlarged to 150% in Firefox. If that’s not what you’re looking for, I’ll bow out. I would think yours would be better than what I’m getting on a 7 year old Westinghouse.
SeaDragon,
are you using VGA or HDMI to connect?
It’s HDMI. The TV only has one port, so I have three HDMI devices connected via a 3-way switch.
your pics look pretty good so hopefully you can help the OP w his settings. i think you’re on the right track, if a given computer’s text looks bad via HDMI, all one can do is adjust things.
the only advice i can give is for my tv, a different brand, but i adjusted mostly in Windows. i ran the TrueType tool a few times to be sure i had the best looking text, then went into my display settings and changed the font both to 150%, then in Windows: color and appearance: changed all the fonts to bold.
my former HDMI text looked thin, washed out, and had a weird yellow flare outlining it. Those steps helped.
Your text looks just as it should. You’re clearly getting a 1-to-1 pixel mapping (no up- or down-scaling), no weird blur filters, and ClearType (subpixel antialiasing) is working.
One thing to check: the OP’s screen may be applying some kind of video filter to the input. These may make video sources look good but can destroy text and other fine graphics. Some TV’s have a “PC mode” or “game mode” for each input that should reduce the amount of processing.
This is the problem. The TV is most likely 1280x720. Could you let us know the specific model, so that can be confirmed?
If it is a 720 TV, there is no best solution to the problem. You either have big clear text or small fuzzy text.
That was my thought too. Ultimately there’s very little if any difference anymore between a TV and a monitor when displaying digital input through the HDMI cable or DVI port.
But if you’re sitting right up on a 32" TV, the pixels are probably actually visible, where they wouldn’t be with say… a 24". I know my 50" Panasonic Plasma still looks kind of bad when I’m standing very close, even with 1080p input, but stand back 5-10 feet and it looks terrific because a lot of the pixelation goes away, and curves look smooth instead of jagged, etc…