TV as a computer monitor help

[dmclone]

This weekend I build a new PC for my sister. She got it home and is having trouble with her display.

Here are the stats
She has a 23" Toshiba w/HDMI
The PC has a 8500gt w/DVI
I bought her a DVI to HDMI cable

When she turns on her PC the first windows boot screen appears and then it goes blank and never comes back.

I tried having her hook up another monitor via DVI and it works fine. I then had her change the resolution to something more common and it's still nto working.

The 8500gt also has a S-Video connection and she used to the Toshiba and it worked fine but the picture quality is un-viewable.


Any ideas what I'm missing? She lives in Cedar Rapids so I wasn't able to hook it up for her but we tried nearly everything.

 

[cytech]

Connecting DVI to HDTV - High Def Forum - Your High Definition Community & High Definition Resource

try that out and see if it works out for ya. If she needs further help I run a computer repair business in cedar rapids so you can send me a PM or something

 

[jbhtexas]

It sounds like a video mode problem. My TV has both a VGA and DVI connection, and it is very finicky about what combinations of resolution, color depth, and frequency it accepts over the DVI connection.

For example, my TV does not accept any 4x3 type resolutions over the DVI connection, except 640x480; other than 640x480, the resolution has got to be 16x9, or the TV goes blank, or pops up an error message, or otherwise tries to rescale the input. The PC I have hooked up also has an nVidia card with a DVI connection. I have my Windows screen resolution set to something like 1360x768x24bit color (which is the max resolution for the display).

My suggestion would be to get the specs for the TV, and find out what combinations of resolution, frequency, and color depth are supported by the HDMI port. Then set your PC to 640x480, and play around with the resolution settings until you find one that works. The nice thing is that Windows will revert back to the previous video mode in 15 seconds if you happen to pick one that doesn't work.

 

[cytech]

yup exactly like he explained there. Basically a DVI moniter is made to tell the computer what resolutions it can support, but TV's can't do that.
In the link I provided there is a program that can read what your TV supports then you can set your video card accordingly.

 

[jbhtexas]

Another thing I sort of remember (and I'm assuming the 8500gt you mentioned is an nVidia-based graphics card)...

In the version of the nVnidia control panel that I have, somewhere there was a choice to select the device that was plugged into the DVI connector. I had to choose "HDTV" (as opposed to "monitor") in order to get things working.

I think when I selected "HDTV", the card started communicating with the TV (as cytech mentioned), and the card pulled back a list of resolutions that would actually work. Prior to that (when "monitor" was selected), I was manually inputting resolution settings as listed in the TV owners manual, and things just didn't work. I recall that it took alot of playing around to get things working.