Help. Laptop HDMI to TV not displaying full screen.

Bought a wired 360 controller to jump into PC games a few days ago and I figured the smart thing to do would be to connect my laptop to my plasma TV so I can enjoy my PC games while I sit on my couch. The problem is that even though my laptop is set to 1080 resolution and my plasma TV is in 1080 resolution the thing isn't being displayed at full screen. I'd say the screen is around 85% the size it should be.


I've looked around online and it seems the problem is that when you connect an HDMI cable to a laptop to display on your TV it doesn't always send the 1080 signal. I've read some crazy solutions that might not work and I don't want to get crazy with this laptop because I need it do my graphic design work.

Do you guys know of this problem? Have you had it? How did you solve it?

I have a Dell Studio XPS 16 and its on Vista. Here are all the specs.

Usually this happens because of a setting or graphics hardware support. Modern HDTV are supposed to be "plug-n-play" as any other computer monitor so there might be an issue with the "handshake" where either the TV or the laptop doesn't quite accept the capability of the other. What does the ATI driver/tool say is connected to the display? If it doesn't see a "Samsung Plasma Something" then there is something off with the driver.

Have you tried to plug in the HDMI and boot the laptop from "cold"? Maybe initializing the graphics with it connected to the TV will get the two to properly negotiate settings.

Is this the desktop that doesn't display full screen or the games too? With my computer/TV setup, the desktop is only about 85 percent, but when I start the games and set the resolution to 1920x1080, they are fullscreen.

Instead of duplicating screens (show on TV what you see in laptop screen) try the option of displaying content in second screen only.

I'll try turning on the laptop with the HDMI cable already connected and display the content on the TV only (not duplicating) and see how that goes.

Have you messed with the overscan settings on your TV or laptop? This sounds like the sort of problem that could possibly caused by either your laptop or your TV trying to account for overscan.

Overscan is the most common issue that ive seen, ATI isnt as friendly with overscan as intel in my previous experience, but mess around with the the overscan in the advanced menu on the graphics interface

Like everyone said go to ccc and change your overscan settings :) enjoy 1080p goodness

That is my main problem. I can't open Catalyst Control Center when I right click the desktop. It doesn't open. Nothing happens. All the ways to fix that sound crazy and I don't want to break my laptop by accidentally doing some step wrong.

sounds like you need to uninstall and then reinstall your drivers

Looks like that high gloss finish is the culprit.

That's what I've read and I've seen people say it didn't fix the problem. They still couldn't open CCC. How involved a process is it to update my drivers (shouldn't it do that automatically?) or to uninstall and reinstall them?

I'd also like to know how badly I can mess things up if I do something wrong.

Step 1

Step 2

That seems simple enough. I guess I'll do this over the weekend when I don't need to do any graphic design stuff right away just in case I screw up selecting the correct drivers.

Finally found this thread. If anyone knows another solution to get CCC to open on my laptop I'd like to hear it.

I strugled with this myself and it seems that its the AMD driver that is compensating by "removing" overscan. To get it to 1:1 format in the correct resolution (given that you run the correct resolution out of your computer to your TV) you will have to set overscan to 0%. You do that by going in to CCC then "my digital Flat panels" and then to "scaling options (digital flat-panel)", inhere you can set the slider for overscan or underscan, on my TV I had to set it all the way to 0% overscan. Then just apply or tweak the settings to fit your TV.

I hope this helps, because there is nothing thats more annoying than knowing you're doing the correct thing but the driver keeps messing things up for you (or in this case the driver settings).

PS: if you're struggling with opening CCC then you are probably running an incompatible version. Try google to find what drivers would fit your card the best (with 4670 that would likely be a driver from 2011 or something like that).