Vista media center problem: dvd's and a samsung lcd

kaisersose77

I got a 32 inch samsung lcd last week

http://www.topvision-online.de/details.html?item=739922229451112ec4d761&

and have it connected to my dell pc through vga. Vista media center is running fine for xvids etc but tonight I tried to play a dvd through vista mce. But the screen goes black and the tv says "mode not supported". Same thing happens for 1024x768 and 1360x768. DVD's play fine through normal programs like powerdvd etc but am confused why they dont work with vista mce. Anyone know what could be the problem?

8T8

Got an NVIDIA card (?) it's display driver from what I can make same thing happened to me sort off with my Samsung TV.

Early drivers had no problem with 1280x720 but newer drivers would say res not supported when I went to change it one day then res disappeared, then went back into display advanced properties and look in all modes section for the graphics card and found the 1280x720 at 32-bit 60Hz and selected that and res appeared again in display properties and was usable.


Try re-installing the display driver and make sure that something like AA is turned off in the control panel.

kaisersose77

its an ati x1300, i installed new drivers for it when i installed vista home premium in order to get rid of the artifacts during xvids. Doesnt give me the option to pick that 1280x720 resolution, just 800x600,1024x768 and 1360x768. And its at 32bit and 60 hertz. I'll check if theres new drivers for the card anyways.

8T8

Interesting maybe it's something to do with the TV ?

Go into Control Panel\Personalization\Display Settings\Advanced Settings\List All Modes

Now look through the list and you should see some resolutions like 1280x720 try them if they work, they now re-appear in the resolution slider bar.

I'm mystified myself as to the cause but I have not had any problem with DVD's as of yet.

ATI have released newer drivers with Catalyst 7.3 being the latest.

kaisersose77

got those latest drivers yesterday but made no difference (i hardly ever watch dvd's anyways but just mistified why they arent working atm), will check out what you said above in a while

cheers


edit:

no sign of 1280x720, just the ones i listed in my post above with the different hertz

mossym

i don't think vista will play copyrighted material over an analog link at anything higher than SD resolutions. For anything HD, it has to be over DVI or HDMI to prevent copying. Try hooking up a DVI cable and seeing if the problem goes away

kaisersose77

Its just vista mce and samsung tv's thats the problem, normal dvd's programs work fine and even my 19inch samsung that i had, played dvd's fine through vista mce (and that tv had a higher resolution 1440x900 - it was a monitor/tv). I'll get a better graphics card down the line, maybe that will help.

8T8

I'm pretty sure it must be something to do with the TV at this stage.

Maybe it's the lack of a driver for the monitor aspect of the TV as it reads it as a generic plug & play through probing the EDID in the display. Something is sufficiently different in Vista and the display drivers which is causing the TV to lose sync in certain scenarios.

An INF driver would hold all the resolutions and frequency's that are capable in the TV so it would know what it is capable of but I do not know of any for Samsung TV's.

Could try emailing Samsung and see what they say...

kaisersose77

ye good idea, thanks for the replies 8t8 and mossym, i'll send them an email later and try thegreenbutton forum aswell in case anyone else had a similar problem.

8T8

While doing a little more research into this I found out that Powerstrip can generate an INF file for a display.

So I installed it and during the programs setup phase it detected the hardware, the graphics card was correct but the monitor was displayed as a 1600x1200 display which was very off because of course it is not capable of such a resolution so I knew something must be up.

I clicked change on the monitor and told it to create a new INF it tried to read the EDID but failed and instead read what Windows and the GPU driver got from the display and created an INF file and presented the options like in the screenshot below, all I changed where I put in the model number of my TV LE32N7 & I ticked the box for DPMS support then clicked the floppy icon to save the inf.

After that use the update driver wizard and point it at the folder where you saved the INF and it will install the driver for the display and I had no problems selecting any resolution after that.

So it could be worth a go in your case as well, sorry I cannot give more precise instructions as once it was completed I could not get Powerstrip to show the same menu as before the one below is the same but with minor differences.

You can also uninstall Powerstrip after this is done.

kaisersose77

cheers i'll give a try now, thanks for all the help as always!

btw the latest ati drivers give a BSOD error, thought my harddrive was fecked until i done a bit of googling

http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=26900

kaisersose77

"After that use the update driver wizard and point it at the folder where you saved the INF"

do you mean go to device manager - display adpaters - graphics card update driver? if so it just says mine is upto date already

and those the discrete timings on the right hand side of you picture mention the 720 resolution? as mine just has all the same ones as before listed


btw using 1024x768 with vista mce, tv show xvids look fine and have the widescreen black borders, but when i use 1360x768 there full screen and seem to be missing some of the picture

8T8

Update driver software->Browse my computer for driver software->Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer->have disk->select custom driver.

What Samsung TV have you got & did Powerstrip detect it initially as a 1600x1200 display ?

As for the XviD issue not sure to be honest no problems with whatever resolution I picked, check the zoom mode in media centre when running at 1360x768 just in case it has gained the ability to store different settings for different resolutions.

kaisersose77

its a Samsung LE32S71B andit detected it as a 1600x1200 like you said, there is only an INF file saved in that folder, does it not need any other file? as i said in my last post, it said my drivers were up to date when i pointed it to the folder.

8T8

Yeah it only needs the INF I don't know why is it saying you already have an up to date driver did you do the exact steps like I linked above as that's the only way to make it present the custom options to you.

Try booting into safe mode and see if you can force the driver update through that.

You could try creating the INF again in Powerstrip.