Crystal clear images from PC to Samsung PDP 50Q97HDX plasma

[admin_exported]

Thanks for the help in my query regarding which speakers and DVD player to upgrade to. Marantz DV7001 and Dali Ikon 6 5.1 are on the list. Hopefully not to stay on the list for too long. Lets see!

In the meantime, my PC monitor cable arrived last night and so I got the chance to hook up my laptop to my new plasma screen for the first time! (Dell Latitude D600 from 2004 with a 14.1 inch SXGA+ resolution of 1400 x 1050). In order to make it work I need to get my laptop to emit a signal as close as possible to the resolution of the plasma screen. It seems that the only way to get it to do this is to set it to emit on the Monitor 2 output and it won't go higher than XGA (1024 x 768).

As the Samsung plasma has a resolution of 1365 X 768 and my laptop seems not to wish to emit an image at this resolution, the plasma picture comes across as ever so slightly blurry. It's not a disaster with movies. In fact good quality DivX movies look pretty good but it's not ideal and it's certainly not great for photos etc.Any advice on how I might be able to remedy this situation?

As a footnote, the plasma I passed on to the folks was a Pioneer PDP4270XD and what a wonderful screen it is, but no PC input! My sister has a consultancy business and so I bought her a Pioneer PDP427XD specifically for PowerPoint presentations to clients and what a treat it is. With a native resolution of XGA (1024x768) the screen and her laptop are an ideal match.

Part of the reason why I bought the Samsung in place of my own, budget, Pioneer was to enable the PC connectivity, so I do hope there is a way to fix it. Of course, one day I'll upgrade the laptop and choose a machine that can emit a digital image, but until now it's the little Dell and it'll have to do!

 

[D.J.KRIME]

I too have this Samsung screen and had the same problem when hooking up my laptop to it but when I use my desktop pc with the resolution set at the same as that of the screen being 1365 X 768 the problem has gone, so form what I can gather the reason the laptop looked fuzzey is down to where the screen is having to upscale the recieved resoultion from the laptop to fit the screens native 1365x768 resolution. The reason that you dont notice this as much when watching DIVX movies is simply due to the fact that these upscaling effects are more obvious when viewing text than that of a movie. So it's either grin and bare it or upgrade the laptop to one with a better resolution/graphics card.
Out of interest did your Samsung come with a motorised swivel stand or a manual one?

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that!

It came with a manual stand (did yours?). I thought it might simply have been a misprint in the reviews but perhaps there is a premium version. My box did say 50Q97HD and not HDX. So perhaps there goes the motorised stand. Still, at £1080, delivered on a Saturday after ordering on a Wednesday, I'm not complaining!!!

In terms of the graphics card, yes I know the reason for the blurring is the plasma upscaling from the 1024x768 signal to it's own native of 1365x768, and I'm also aware that unless I can modify the output to match the screen's resolution then there really is no solution. I can live with it for DivX, for sure.

Do you or anyone else out there know whether a video card in a laptop can be upgraded or re-flashed to improve it's firmware. After all, as the laptop itself is 1400x1050 there should be no shortage of graphical processing power on the card, simply that the plasma is not a resolution it's set up to handle on an external monitor / Or so it seems!

 

[Anonymous]

Downloaded a new driver for my video card from the manufacturers website last night. I now have the ability to set monitor 2 to output at 1280 x 768 which although not exactly the same as the 1366 x 768 of my screen, is a lot closer than the 1024 x 768 I had available previously!

Haven't had a chance to plug one into the other and see if it works yet, but will try tonight and let you all know. Pity I still can't allocate the correct output dimensions but I think 50 inch plasma resolutions have little in common with regular PC screen sizes and as such are just not catered to. Perhaps newer video cards would be capable!