[mythtv-users] Migrating from VGA to HDMI

[Phill Edwards]

I bought a 50" Panasonic TH-50PX600A plasma TV a few months ago and
have had it connected via VGA. The picture has been good but I
couldn't get X to fill the screen - it leaves quite a large blank
border on the right and bottom sides, and sometimes these blank areas
fill with "snow" which doesn't look good and I fear may cause burn-in
on the plasma screen.

So I recently bought a cable to connect my nVidia card's DVI-D output
to the HDMI input on my TV. Initially the picture seemed what I can
only describe as "lairy" - over-vibrant, over-colourful and just
didn't look as good as with VGA. But it does fill the screen and I
found that the difference was due to different colour settings on the
TV for different inputs - doh! So if anyone else has this model TV I
can recommend HDMI over VGA.

I have some questions, though...

1) The manual says these inputs are acceptable on HDMI:
480i (60Hz)
480p (60Hz)
576i (50Hz)
576p (50Hz)
720p (60Hz)
720p (50Hz)
1080i (60Hz)
1080i (50Hz)
What do people recommend I use as TVStandard in xorg.conf? I used to
use PAL-B. Will picture quality be better if I use something like
HD1080i or HD720p? I thought (possibly naively!) that if my resolution
is 1280x720 then using 720p would somehow be a good "match" - is there
any sense in that or not? To be honest, I haven't found a lot of
difference no matter which TVStandard setting I use.

2) Since using DVI --> HDMI I have found that console windows (when
you press Shift-Alt-F1) are too big for the screen so that the top,
bottom and sides seem to be cut off from view. This is a bit of a pain
as I use the console quite a lot for fiddling around with stuff. Is
there anything I can do to correct this?

Regards,
Phill