HDMI connected monitor is blurry and seems out of focus

[MaxS]

Hello, I built my new computer about a week ago and was running it off a single 19" Tevion TV while I waited for the HDMI cables to arrive so I could setup my second monitor.

They arrived yesterday and when I plugged in my 32" JVC LT-32DA30J there was overscanning and the bluriness. I fixed the overscanning in the TV's menu and now the size is correct but even at native resolution, the JVC monitor is still quite blurry and is a strain to look at and concentrate on.

Plugging the HDMI cable into my Tevion monitor made that go blurry as well so it could be the HDMI cable or the motherboard ports (when I first got the PC, the VGA port had the same problem but once updated it looked normal)

Does anyone know of a fix to this ? Or can at least suggest what part is going wrong so I can try and fix it ?

What I have tried:
Changing the resolution - all the different resolutions all show the same blurriness
Changing the refresh rate - problem persists through all refresh rates
Changing monitor settings - As above, changing these settings didn't help with anything

Any help is very appreciated , I've been trying to fix this problem for most of yesterday

 

[badger906]

you dont seem to have changed the 2 most important things!!

1) update the display/gpu drivers.
2) change the hdmi cable.

if neither results in it working then report back!

 

[MaxS]

Thank you for the suggestion I should of mentioned that I had checked for updated prior to posting and the Intel HD drivers are all up to date. I have just tried a different HDMI cable and it gave the same blurriness as the other one. I checked that they are not faulty as I plugged my Xbox into the same monitor using the same HDMI cable and the picture was clear and crisp.

 

[Boozad]

What resolution is your TV? PCs through TVs tend to look crappy anyway even at 1080p, games might look OK but the desktop environment can get blurry.

 

[badger906]

Gav beat me to it, but yeah, Tvs dont have a very pixel density, or DPI which results in washed out and poor looking fine detail up close.

when you consider the minimum viewing distance for a 32" TV is about 6ft so they can get away with the poor DPI, where as you sitting a few feet away means youll notice these things. 32" pc monitors arent overpriced compared to tvs as many people think they are, they are better in more than one way!

Also the chipset on your mobo may only support certain refresh rates at specific resolutions. e.g 1920x1080@30hz or 1444x900@60hz ect. i just did a quick google but gigabyte are a little vague on the tech specs only giving the upper limits..

 

[MaxS]

Thanks for all the replys guys So the problem is more than likely my TV and not the cable or mobo? I had it connected with a VGA from a laptop before and it looked fine so would connecting it with VGA be a better idea?

 

[badger906]

your laptop probably has a different native resolution and refresh rate that better suits your tv.
look into investing in a budget gpu, it may give better results as it will support more resolutions and refresh rates.

 

[MaxS]

I'm looking to get a GTX 750ti made by Gigabyte, would that be of sufficient quality ?

 

[badger906]

yeah be a great card! good little gamer card too

 

[MaxS]

Awesome! I suppose I'll have to wait for that then. Thank you for all your help

 

[Pete4]

I don't know about OP problem, but I had similar issue with my 47" TV hooked up to computer and I investigated it deeply few years back. It came out that for some very strange and cheap reason some TV's don't support full 1080p RGB info. The 1920 pixel video received over HDMI is converted into some stripped down 960 pixel as far as RGB color info goes, processed and then expanded back to 1920pixel (in other words color info is shared by two adjoining pixels). This processing is fine for video and pictures, but looks horrible when it comes to small font computer text display. There is simple test for this, if OP wants I could look for it. I don't remember "why" details anymore but VGA looks better.
If OP problem is related to mine and he will be using his TV as a main display, no video card will solve this issue. Another problem here is that this info is not revealed in any manufacturers specs and one would have to go to TV forum or test himself to see if given TV has that limitation, but probably most less expensive ones do, except top of the line and dedicated computer monitors.

 

[Boozad]

My daughters have their rig hooked up to a TV, it used to be a 24" JVC HD ready model and the picture was absolutely awful, we had to scale the resolution to even read anything. Now I've bought them a Samsung 5 Series and while you can get away with 1080p it's still slightly blurred. Games and videos look great but Windows isn't 100% to echo what Pete4 just said. They are running an HD7850-DC2T which looked perfect on my Samsung SyncMaster so it is down to the TVs.

 

[MaxS]

Pete4 - If you can find the test that would be great! It's been bugging me for a while now

Boozad - That sounds very similar to the problem I have, when set to 1080p I cant even read the text on the screen so maybe its just a JVC problem

 

[Pete4]

OK, this is quick review what chroma subsampling is in general: Chroma subsampling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Some TV's have PC or game setting that passes full chroma (color info), but many don't, so check if you have that setting on yours. I had HDD crash few months back, I thought I restored everything, but I can't find my TV folder, so will take some time to look for it in back ups, sorry, but the test was very simple: set of vertical color lines, right next to each other without any borders. If you have no chroma subsampling, the colors will change from red to blue to green etc immediately. If you do have color subsampling then there will be one pixel line in between color stripes with mix of colors from both sides, since 2 pixels share color info.
This is very old (4yrs) thread on AVS forum talking about the issue:
4:4:4 Chroma needed for HDTV as a computer monitor?
maybe this will give you better idea of what am I talking about.
The reason VGA is looking better is because it is assumed to be computer signal and bypasses most of the signal processing inside TV, but VGA being analog has less sharpness than pure digital video over HDMI, to begin with.