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Samsung monitor: rename HDMI input to PC... wait, what?

Leonsito

Member
I bought a Samsung monitor months ago, it is the model XL2370HD, I'm happy with it, cheap, fullhd and all that.

I've been playing via HDMI my xbox for months but I always noticed that there were too many jaggies on the images, I thought that my TV wasn't good enough and just kept it that way, but my PC games looked impressive on it (leaving aside the superior AA options and all that) and started to wonder if there was something I have configured the wrong way.

And I just stumbled to a couple of forums when people give this advice: "Rename the HDMI input to PC", my initial reaction was that it was some kind of "joke" for the samsung-owners, but ... what the hell, I was playing Mass Effect, the jaggies were clearly less visible, but there is more, I CAN SEE MORE SCREEN NOW ! it's like the input was eating half an inch off the screen, the only downside it's that the colors seem a bit more warm.

So.. what the hell is this ? It's a bug ? How do you have your TV settings?
 
Original settings had overscan. Cuts off a bit of the image. Putting it to PC mode displayed the full image, HDTVs generally have a setting for that too which is recommended to enable.
 

Leonsito

Member
Rickenslacker said:
Original settings had overscan. Cuts off a bit of the image. Putting it to PC mode displayed the full image, HDTVs generally have a setting for that too which is recommended to enable.

Wow, so it's normal? Mind blown, I've been playing my xbox wrong all this time...

Why would they put overscan for HDMI inputs?
 
Leonsito said:
Wow, so it's normal? Mind blown, I've been playing my xbox wrong all this time...

Why would they put overscan for HDMI inputs?
Well the whole changing the input to PC is usually specific to Samsung I think. They use TV settings on HDMI by default, which also explains the different colours and overscan. As to why HDTVs keep overscan? Not too sure it's mostly a holdover from SD stuff.

Anyways on monitors you generally don't have to deal with overscan, but on any HDTV you definitely want it off for games and in general.
 

McNum

Member
Huh? I tried it on my Philips and yeah, I get quite a bit more image out of it, but it also mutes the colors from my PS3 quite a bit. I think there's a setting on the PS3 that can change that, though. Must experiment. It looks pretty smooth, though, not quite sure if it's being scaled down from some higher resolution or if it's just supposed to look like that.
 

Akkad

Banned
I have my Samsung TV connected to my PC through HDMI and I have to change the label to Blu Ray in order to see all the advanced picture options, pretty dumb.
 
I remember posting this almost like 6 months ago... I have an P2370HD Monitor and felt the same way while playing my console, although my PC looked incredible. The way I fixed it (before running with that forum) was using my HDMI/DVI Adapter that my HD3870 had, and that way I could see consoles the way they were supposed to!

Then I found out about that setting (which personally I think it makes no sense) and since I had been given posting privileges here, I came to post it here right away but no one cared =(

Anyway, that setting is an incredible visual upgrade... it's almost like a 2x layer of antialiasing in consoles and some color and size upgrade =D... still it doesn't beat the feeling a 46'' or higher plasma can get, but for people with no plasma (like me) it was AWESOME!

I think someone should start a thread of useful technical tips and THAT should be in the top 20!

Anyway cheers and enjoy =D
 

DJ_Lae

Member
Hmm, I'll have to try that on my Samsung TV. I currently have the labels matching my devices (for the most part), but this would explain why you can't just do custom labels on a Samsung TV.

I wonder if I can enable game mode on an input that's not labeled game. Probably not, if this is any indication. But hey, every single input defaults to motion smoothing on!
 

ss_lemonade

Member
What's the point of using anything other than PC mode? I have the LED version of the OP's monitor and it has the same thing (PC/AV Mode) and AV mode looks terrible on it for me.
 

Madao

Member
i noticed this on my LG TV when i set up my computer to watch stuff on the TV (my back gave in and i couldn't keep watching it on a chair on the PC)

any other mode other than "just scan" makes the image look blurrier.
 

Leonsito

Member
I was trying now with "screen fit" instead of 16:9, seems like it's the same as renaming the HDMI input to PC regarding overscan, so I put the HDMI back to the default name.

And now I can activate game mode and have more image settings, this looks like a new TV now, I don't get why 16:9 mode with a 16:9 input has this huge overscan.

Thank you guys for the tips.
 

Anony

Member
it's called overscan, the simplest of research could of informed you on that
sigh, this is your avg consumer moment right here, so uninformed
 
PC mode also disables all of the screen "enhancements" that typically cause screen lag. Also looks a helluva lot better than Game Mode. Only downside is that (on my Samsung model LN40A650, not sure about others) it only works in native resolution. Not a problem for 360/PC, but severely limiting on PS3.
 
My Samsung LCD HDTV (LN40B650) does this, but only on HDMI 1 and only with certain resolutions (I know 1280x720 and 1920x1080 work). The other ports don't change when named PC.

It's not much different than turning on Game Mode and setting the screen size to "Screen Fit."
 

Persona7

Banned
Anony said:
it's called overscan, the simplest of research could of informed you on that
sigh, this is your avg consumer moment right here, so uninformed
The average consumer would spend thousands of dollars on a fancy HDTV but have their consoles and HD cable boxes connected via composite.
 
Wtf? I just changed the monitor I use for my ps3 over to PC mode and the color looks substantially more accurate. I could never figure out why it looked so fucked up. Big thanks for this.
 
Billychu said:
Samsung TV are shit until you change the name of the input. It's the dumbest thing ever.
That is inaccurate. The biggest thing changing his input to PC probably did was switch the settings the presets were on.

On my Samsung TV it drops the artificial digital sharpness to zero (therefore reducing jaggies) and turns off overscan by setting the image size to "screen fit." Meaning all 2,073,600 pixels are being filled by the video source instead of zooming in on the image.

All of these settings are available on the TVs without using PC mode. It must be a little different for the monitors - I checked my SyncMaster EX2220X, and it has A/V mode (overscan) and PC mode (no overscan) to choose from.
 

Cipherr

Member
Anony said:
it's called overscan, the simplest of research could of informed you on that
sigh, this is your avg consumer moment right here, so uninformed


Relax buddy, it's not that big a deal.
 

Brazil

Living in the shadow of Amaz
Anony said:
it's called overscan, the simplest of research could of informed you on that
sigh, this is your avg consumer moment right here, so uninformed
Chill, bro. That's not widely known at all.
 

Rikkun

Member
hmm... setting to PC my HDMI label won't change anything on my PS3.

But yeah, I changed from 16:9 to fit screen... wow, I was missing like an inch on every side.. but I never noticed, every screen setup in games was perfect as it was..

Actually yeah, I'm kind of noob when it comes to image quality. I never cared to find out what are all those "blacks" options, I just activate game mode sometimes and stare in awe my blurays.
 

M3d10n

Member
Both overscan and color range are both leftovers from the analog CRT TV era:

1) The vast majority of the TVs didn't allow for scan area adjustments so content was designed with overscan areas which were usually outside the TV tube.

2) Both NTSC and PAL had issues carrying pure black or full white signals. Video content used a reduced color range that was expanded on the TV itself.

Analog PC monitors never suffered from this: they have user-adjustable scan regions and the analog VGA connector was designed to carry full-range colors. This is why "PC mode" in modern TVs displays the signals "as is" while "TV mode" is designed to display TV content without messing it up, even if they are digital signals.

Both the 360 and the PS3 have settings to output "full range" colors. You *must* set this when using PC mode or connecting them to PC monitors without TV features otherwise will never get full blacks nor full whites.
 

Dexa

Banned
works on my samsung too (LE32A659A).

renaming it to "pc" is basically the game mode for my model (works only on hdmi input 2).
there is no other way to activate it.
 

GrayFoxPL

Member
Dexa said:
works on my samsung too (LE32A659A).

renaming it to "pc" is basically the game mode for my model (works only on hdmi input 2).
there is no other way to activate it.

I have one hdmi only. This "trick" does nothing. Games with horrible overscan problems like Earthworm Jim HD or Space invaders still have it.
 
Rickenslacker said:
Well the whole changing the input to PC is usually specific to Samsung I think. They use TV settings on HDMI by default, which also explains the different colours and overscan. As to why HDTVs keep overscan? Not too sure it's mostly a holdover from SD stuff.

Anyways on monitors you generally don't have to deal with overscan, but on any HDTV you definitely want it off for games and in general.
I thought it was specific to Samsung too (used to have one) which is why I started to use the game console input name/icon for my 360 and the bluray name/icon for my ps3 when I got my 47" LG HDTV... but recently I found out that it was also overscanning and when I renamed it to "PC" it wasn't overscanned.
 

Gravijah

Member
Anony said:
it's called overscan, the simplest of research could of informed you on that
sigh, this is your avg consumer moment right here, so uninformed

this is the funniest thing i have read today. so much humor packed into one post.
 
Man I have a generic knock-off HDTV and it doesn't have controls for the overscan, so I can only output my PC at 1680x1050 maximum without it cropping over HDMI. Basically any "real" TV resolution will trigger the overscan, really annoys me.
 

JimboJones

Member
Thanks for this tried it and it seems to work. Always wondered why the picture looked like it had some sharpness setting turned on (edge enhancment being off and sharpness turned down) yet if i switched to a vga connection I would get a softer image.
 
It makes me sad when I think of the number of HD consoles in the world attached to screens that cut off a considerable amount of the pixels that the owner paid for.
 

Mr. Robot

Member
I had a similar experience, but it was more of a Derp moment from my part, i always had my xbox conected to my TV with component cables to a Samsung (720 hdtv).
But i always noticed that something was off, i always put it with the 720p option in the xbox dashboard even when my TV supported the 1080p option, the resason was that i always tought that the native resolution of the tv was 720p and a downscaled 1080p image would introduce input lag and such.

So after a year of having it that way i hooked up a HDMI cable and started to search on the Xbox dashboard for the TV options, and i found a new option that i had never seen before, the autodetect function, so i put it and everything looked much better, then i realized that my tv was not 720p but 1366x768, so i was playing with an upscaled 720p image but missing part of the image.
 

Red

Member
Pazuzu9 said:
It makes me sad when I think of the number of HD consoles in the world attached to screens that cut off a considerable amount of the pixels that the owner paid for.
Most people don't even notice. They want the biggest and best and make these thousand dollar investments but never do even the most basic research.
 

CamHostage

Member
Gah, I can't believe overscan is still plaguing video in the HD era!

And so few TVs have an option for working with it even though it's been part of the stream for ages and could still very easily be a major nuisance if your signal isn't matched. It's so frustrating, manufacturers could easily offer options to adjust for it with blackout pixels (and stretching for those not comfortable losing the screen size) and modern TVs deal with individual pixel problems a hell of a lot better than old cathode ray tubes. Instead, not only do they neglect the option (stow it in the Advanced menu if you're so worried about people not understanding its use,) when they actually do give some options they hide it under weird setting names or in some unexpected set of presets so that even hardcore users like people on this forum don't know the option is part of their box.

So sad, we're talking a direct digital HDMI signal of all things yet users have trouble avoiding video broadcast compromises from 70 years ago...

Anony said:
it's called overscan, the simplest of research could of informed you on that
sigh, this is your avg consumer moment right here, so uninformed

Don't be rude. It's often easy to know when something's wrong with your video device; it's often difficult to know what that problem is and what to do about it (it's not like there's any great likelihood of finding a under/overscan option in your TV menu.) Clearly others have been helped in this thread.
 
UltimateIke said:
That is inaccurate. The biggest thing changing his input to PC probably did was switch the settings the presets were on.

On my Samsung TV it drops the artificial digital sharpness to zero (therefore reducing jaggies) and turns off overscan by setting the image size to "screen fit." Meaning all 2,073,600 pixels are being filled by the video source instead of zooming in on the image.

All of these settings are available on the TVs without using PC mode. It must be a little different for the monitors - I checked my SyncMaster EX2220X, and it has A/V mode (overscan) and PC mode (no overscan) to choose from.
This is Correct
 

luka

Loves Robotech S1
Yeah, I discovered this a few years back. HDMI2 renamed to PC removes all image processing and makes the colors more balanced/no bleeding and reduces input lag. Too bad it only works on the one input. :p
 

Shai-Tan

Banned
look for a just scan, no overscan, screen fit or similar either in a button or in the menu. no need for PC mode on most TV unless they're old. on samsung and a lot of other tv there's a button to cycle through modes like 4:3, 16:9, just scan, whatever
 
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