HDMI or VGA connection?

[dc9mm]

Any real differance between in quality connecting PC to HDTV with the VGA cable or using a DVI to HDMI cable to connect to PC?

One thing i noticed is when connecting with a VGA cable and if watching analog cable TV like SciFi channel were most of there shows are actually filmed in wide format i cant get my TV to use the whole screen. Normally i have the choices (normal, wide, zoom, and cinema). But with the VGA cable i can only use wide or normal. Watching a wide setting the show on analog cable i get a letter boxed wide format screen. This doesnt apply to HDTV i get through an antenna.
If i use the DVI to HDMI cable i get back all my choices (normal,wide,zoom,cinema) and find the cinema choice is best for watching analog cable tv shows that are wide screen. Anyone else notice this? Maybe its my TV not sure.

[Djc208]

I never noticed a difference in quality between the two, though I'm not as picky as some may be. I ended up going back to VGA for two reasons though, one I needed the HDMI port for something else but also because my TV allowed me to better handle overscan and position with the VGA input.

My Samsung has lots of options for picture position and size for the PC input. The HDMI however was not configurable so I had some overscan on the image. I could take it out with the Sage window setup but any time I tried to use the desktop it was tough to see. The graphics driver has some adjustments but not enough for my use, and they didn't always work right.

As for your window options you shouldn't need to use any from the TV. Sage has many more options on how to zoom or crop the image, and if you don't like the ones provided you can add your own. Much easier and more flexible.

[dc9mm]

Originally Posted by Djc208

As for your window options you shouldn't need to use any from the TV. Sage has many more options on how to zoom or crop the image, and if you don't like the ones provided you can add your own. Much easier and more flexible.

The option in sagetv for window size doesnt seem to have much effect at all on picture size on my TV. Choices i found in sagetv were, fill, 16-9, 16-10, 4-3. I think that was it. BUT non seem to have much effect at all. Fill doesnt fill the screen. Not even close. This was with either the vga and hdmi connection. But using the options on the TV itself work well enough. Generaly i mostly watch the HD digital channels i get with antenna. abc,nbc,cbs and fox. These all fit perfectly with TV set at wide screen mode. Plus if its a analog Cable TV show (i dont get digital cable $$) and TV is in wide screen mode TV shows it as 4/3 as it should with letter boxed at the sides. Its the Sci Fi channel that broadcasts in wide format but on analog cable. So far its the only channel i have seen do this (might be more not sure) So with that channel I switch TV to cinema screen mode on TV which works filling entire screen only cutting off just a very slight amount from top and bottom (really small amount, not a problem) . I have no clue why SageTv screen options have no effect.

[Djc208]

Originally Posted by dc9mm

The option in sagetv for window size doesnt seem to have much effect at all on picture size on my TV. Choices i found in sagetv were, fill, 16-9, 16-10, 4-3.

Those are the ones you select when you do your initial setup. Sage has the ability to do zoom modes like the TV. I mostly use SageMC so I'm not as familiar with how to do it in the stock interface but in SageMC I hit the "OK/select" button (in the middle of the arrow pad), and in the menu is an option for "aspect ratio" The options are source, fill, zoomA, zoomB, Letterbox. I've added panoramic and pillarbox thanks to instructions by Stanger which help with the Sci-fi picture type you mentioned (a 16:9 picture inside a 4:3 picture on an HD channel so you have black bars all around the picture).