[FreeasabirdUK]

Hi - is there a way of making the image fit the screen when watching laptop content on a TV? I have successfully connected my Mitsubishi Lifebook to my Sony Bravia via HDMI cable and both sound and vision are excellent BUT there is always a black border around the picture. No resolution adjustments on either the laptop or the TV make any difference.

I'm sure I must be missing something... Sincere thanks for any help.

[grahamlthompson]

Your laptop screen and the PC must be the same aspect ratio.
If not without borders the image would have to be distorted.

If you have a 16:9 laptop 1280 x 720 (and 1920 x 1080 if you have it) should fill the screen.

[Mikay]

There is a way to do it if you go into your graphics card settings usually found by right clicking the desktop (I've been using Windows 8 since yesterday so not sure of all the settings - but it's there in Vista and W7 as I've done it on two laptops with these before)

Once you've gotten into the settings for your graphics card (I can't find it on my laptop, but maybe the graphics card options only appear when you're connected to your TV) there should be an option to resize the screen. From memory it'll be a % you'll over-adjust so you're filling the screen.

Sorry I couldn't be more specific (and I guess the settings menu vary from graphics card to graphics card), but I'm trying to rely on memory. Have a play around with it.

[FreeasabirdUK]

Hi Graham,

Thanks very much for your reply - I'm not able to try it out just at the moment but your solution sounds logical and eminently sensible. D'oh. Can't wait to see if it works - will report back asap.

Thanks again!

[D3XT3R]

Originally Posted by grahamlthompson

Your laptop screen and the PC must be the same aspect ratio.
If not without borders the image would have to be distorted.

If you have a 16:9 laptop 1280 x 720 (and 1920 x 1080 if you have it) should fill the screen.

My Tosh laptop is 1440x900 and my tv screen is 1920x1080 but it scales spot on. My ATI card has an overscan setting so that you can expand the pic to fit the tv screen, check see if there are any settings in the GPU control centre

[emptybox]

Originally Posted by D3XT3R

My Tosh laptop is 1440x900 and my tv screen is 1920x1080 but it scales spot on. My ATI card has an overscan setting so that you can expand the pic to fit the tv screen, check see if there are any settings in the GPU control centre

1440x900 is 16:10, and 1920x1080 is 16:9, so they're not the same aspect ratio and you must be distorting one or losing some of the image off the screen.

I would have thought the best thing to do would be to temporarily change the resolution to that of the TV, while you are showing stuff on it. Or extend the computer desktop on to the telly, rather than cloning it?

[c4rv]

Sounds like over-scan problem. There should be a setting on desktop settting. However you may need load drivers from the graphics card vendors instead of default windows ones. I know this is definitely the case with ATI video cards, the default driver from microsoft does not have the overscan option and you end up with a black border.

If you are using Win7 or Win8 then it will almost certainly auto-resize to 1920x1080 as its capable of detecting TV capabilities through HDMI connection.

[FreeasabirdUK]

Very grateful also to Mikay (who just pipped my first reply yesterday) , D3XT3R, emptybox and C4rv for all your ideas. I must admit I had wrongly assumed that the aspect ratios of the laptop and TV were the same. I've tried Graham's simple suggestion and bingo, it works!! Now we don't need to buy a Smart TV for a little while longer...

THANK YOU very much!