I recently updated video drivers for an ATI Radeon HD4350 on my MC machine. When I rebooted I had about an inch of black around my HD TV. With help from the forums here I was able to determine that it was an underscan issue and was able to fix it via the Catalyst Control software (which, btw, is one of the worst interfaces I have run across recently).
However, when I run MC I have the same black "margin" around the screen. I can fix this by minimizing MC and then restoring it to full screen, but I have no idea why it would initially appear the way it does. I've hunted through the forums for underscan problems but can't seem to find anything that helps. I've rerun the TV setup multiple times to no avail.
Oh, and the new drivers now result in an audio "pop" when I minimize MC. The previous drivers would cut audio out completely when minimizing or maximizing the MC window.
It doesn't help that just about every time I start my MC machine I run across some type of new glitch or problem. Underscan issues, music library rebuilding issues, wrong cover artwork issues, audio dropouts, glitches during live TV, glitches playing back recorded TV. It just never seems to end. Sigh.
roliverI recently updated video drivers for an ATI Radeon HD4350 on my MC machine. When I rebooted I had about an inch of black around my HD TV. With help from the forums here I was able to determine that it was an underscan issue and was able to fix it via the Catalyst Control software (which, btw, is one of the worst interfaces I have run across recently).However, when I run MC I have the same black "margin" around the screen. I can fix this by minimizing MC and then restoring it to full screen, but I have no idea why it would initially appear the way it does. I've hunted through the forums for underscan problems but can't seem to find anything that helps. I've rerun the TV setup multiple times to no avail. Oh, and the new drivers now result in an audio "pop" when I minimize MC. The previous drivers would cut audio out completely when minimizing or maximizing the MC window. It doesn't help that just about every time I start my MC machine I run across some type of new glitch or problem. Underscan issues, music library rebuilding issues, wrong cover artwork issues, audio dropouts, glitches during live TV, glitches playing back recorded TV. It just never seems to end. Sigh.
I agree. As much as I like Media Center, it just seems to be one thing to trouble shoot after another. As far as this issue, adjusting the overscan only changes the resolution you are currently using. Media Center often uses a different resolution than your desktop. So say your desktop is 1280x720 and Media Center is 1920x1080. When you open CCC and make adjustments, only 1280x720 is changed. Change your resolution to 1920x1080 on your desktop and then make your changes. Then you can change it back.
My desktop resolution is 1920x1080, and that is the resolution that MC detects during TV setup.
This is a very annoying issue. Under "display" (I think) you right click on the display on the bottom (labeled "1") and choose properties. Then you can go to 0% overscan.
It took a lot of googling and a few hours for me to figure out that the new drivers automatically underscan by 15% when it detects a HDTV. Lame considering not all of us run TV's that overscan.
I've already fixed the original underscan issue that popped up after the driver update using the method you indicated. The black bars around the edges of the TV only appear when running MC full screen. They do not appear under any other circumstance.
Some more fiddling this morning has revealed a few more things:
Another weird issue has surface this morning as well. In addition to the black border, the interface elements for MC are now inset about a 1/4" from the MC blue background. I tried to take a screenshot but was unsuccessful.
roliver, you might want to use ATI's tool to remove all of their drivers from your system unless you need Catalyst for some reason. I've got a Radeon 2600HD and it works as expected with the drivers from Microsoft update. The original Win7 install disk drivers had the black border issue, but the new drivers removed it.
I’ve had exactly the same various problems and rolling back didn’t help either. Here is what I found along with some of my “fixes.” I left out some of the stuff I tried because it didn’t seem to make any difference for me, like plugging the PC straight into the TV instead of going through my AV receiver, or creating a dedicated EDID for my TV monitor. Other aspects may not apply to you because our setups might be different, but hopefully it will give you a few ideas of other settings you can try messing around with.
Even adjusting the overscan in CCC didn’t fully get rid of the borders. There was still a very little extra border, and in fact it wasn’t evenly distributed around my screen. It is almost imperceptible but I measured it and comparing it to output from my Xbox. I found what completely eliminated the black border was changing the refresh rate from 60 to 59.x. However when doing that it produced a few side effects (no pun intended). First, the desktop extended past the edge of the screen. Also, the overscan slider was disabled. And last, it creates a strange fuzzy static when something is dragged or moved. But I left it that way temporarily.
Next I started up Media Center. Ran through the TV setup and selected flat screen, HDMI, and the current resolution (1080p @ 59.x). Close Media Center, opened it, and no borders. Feeling good. I had it this way for the Super Bowl where I, and all of the guests thought it looked great. Nope. Yesterday I realized that the video picture and the Media Center UI both had overscan, where some of the image went off the screen. Same for the Media Center UI on certain screens. (Note: for the troubleshooting I had a recorded show where I would try to eyeball how much I could see of a paused image while adjusting settings. Really annoying. I was doing this yesterday evening until I thought to record an episode of Cash Cab which neatly lines up the taxi meter borders in the bottom left corner. Very helpful. It obviously needs to be an HD recording of the show.)
Next I went back into the TV setup. This time I didn’t select flat screen but instead selected TV, HDMI, and current resolution. Before clicking the preview it says it will adjust the overscan. Clicking preview and saving these settings made it perfect. Well almost- it made the fonts smaller, and the UI now has underscan where the close box, time, etc. are brought in. But I think I can live with that because I can see everything in the UI now and the picture has no overscan or underscan.
Now back to the desktop piece. I didn’t think it was very important until I launched Hulu Desktop and saw I had the same problem where the image was cut off a bit. So I changed the refresh back to 60 Hz, or within CCC changed it to 1080 @ 30 and then back to 1080 @ 60 and many reboots in between. At some point the overscan slider is re-enabled. I adjusted this a bit and now I am back to the other problem with the tiny border for the desktop and Hulu Desktop. But Media Center retains its own resolution (1080p @ 59.x) so when I launch that it looks perfect (font size and UI underscan withstanding). This kind of works for my setup because I spend >95% of my time in Media Center. My TV goes black momentarily when it changes resolution/refresh rate during the launch of Hulu Desktop from Media Center, but now I kind of think of that as a feature where I don’t see most of the Hulu updates and load screen when it launches. The only issue is the tiny border in Hulu Desktop and the rest of Windows.
I’m sure I will resume fidgeting with these settings once the next version of the drivers comes out just to torture myself. I had other problems with HDCP handshaking while turning on components and switching inputs with different driver versions, but I’ll save that post for a different thread.
DFox) Next I went back into the TV setup. This time I didn’t select flat screen but instead selected TV, HDMI, and current resolution. Before clicking the preview it says it will adjust the overscan. Clicking preview and saving these settings made it perfect. Well almost- it made the fonts smaller, and the UI now has underscan where the close box, time, etc. are brought in. But I think I can live with that because I can see everything in the UI now and the picture has no overscan or underscan.
After applying this fix (selecting TV and getting rid of scan issues) you can open up your registry to move the close box, time, etc. back to their proper places:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\MCE.PerUserSettings]"marginLeft"=dword:00000000"marginTop"=dword:00000000"marginRight"=dword:00000000"marginBottom"=dword:00000000"marginSaved"=dword:00000001"useDefaultOverscanMargins"=dword:00000000
Great tip. I just tried it however and things get cut off again in the UI. I mean the time and control bars are in the proper locations, but an Extra I have installed goes to the edge and setting these margins to 0 truncates some of the text. So I reverted the registry back to the export I took before making the changes.
This does give me another setting to mess around with when I screw all of this up during the installation of the next version of the video driver.
I managed to fix my underscan issues by finding the original drivers on the HP support site.
Sadly, while the underscan issue is fixed, I've got another problem: brightness changes throughout MC, and what looks like saturation changes while watching any type of video. I have no such issues when watching TV without MC, or when watching DVDs or Blu-rays, or when using the computer for anything not related to MC. I can't find any type of automatic color correction features in Catalyst Control Center that would seem to account for this.
I'm beginning to think I should have taken a college course before getting a MC machine. In two decades of dealing with computers I don't think I have ever run across so many problems and glitches with a system. The computer itself runs fine. The fun starts when I run MC. It's great when it does work, but that is becoming increasingly rare.