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I've done quite a bit of reading around on this kind of issue and still haven't been able to solve it. Here's the information:

(TV) Sceptre E328BV-FMDC 32-Inch 1080p 60Hz LED HDTV

(Graphics Card) 2 x GIGABYTE GV-N660OC-2GD GeForce GTX 660 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card [running SLI]

(OS) Windows 7

The TV has two interfaces: HDMI and VGA (manual says VGA supports 1080p). The graphics cards have three interfaces: HDMI, DVI-I, and DVI-D.

I originally established an HDMI connection. Everything looked great except for text. The most common example of this was black text appearing to be blue or red in places, and blue-underlined links being black in places. These were the most noticeable examples, but all text seemed to be affected.

I've tried turning off NVidia's overscaling and my TV won't allow the selection of dot-by-dot (1:1 or pixel by pixel on other TV's) when using the HDMI port.

I then purchased a VGA to DVI-I cable and the text looked fine, but everything else definitely wasn't up to 1080p quality. Plus, there were slight, but present, static-y lines running horizontally across the screen (they're most noticeable in games running on 1080p, even with V-Sync enabled). I read somewhere that this happens when you convert VGA to DVI at 1080p.

Two interesting things about the HDMI method: turning off ClearType in Windows 7 fixes the issue, but text is really terrible to look at after that, and switching to a custom resolution of 1080i in the NVidia control panel also seems to fix it, but then everything else is of really poor quality.

Can anyone explain what the source of the issue here is, or how I would go about fixing it? I would really like to use an HDMI connection on this one.

Thanks!

EDIT: Starting to think ClearType is the issue here. Found this page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa970267(v=vs.110).aspx

The Gamma settings in particular look like they might help. Can't mess with them right now, but will when I get home later tonight. Also, if I open a notepad document, fill it with w's (which seem to have a major issue with the coloring) what happens is they're all red, then if I drag the window very slightly, they turn blue, then red again and so on. Strange.

enter image description here

EDIT2: I couldn't edit the ClearType Registry settings (for some reason they had no effect) so I downloaded GDIPP, had too much trouble, and finally downloaded MacType. From here, I built a custom profile from the Windows 7 optimized one and found the issue. There is a setting called "Optimize for LCD", a couple of them actually. I changed it to Light Anti-aliasing. Now, it ain't super pretty, but the red/blue shadows are gone and the text looks just fine. I'm going to call this one solved for now and say that Microsoft really should put some more effort into their text rendering :P

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  • When you're in the 1080p mode (instead of 1080i), does the resolution in your nVidia change? Like, instead of say 1920 x 1080 does it drop down?
    – KickAss
    Dec 21, 2013 at 22:07
  • Nope. NVidia shows 1080p, 1920 x 1080 (native), and Windows shows 1920 x 1080 (recommended).
    – user283755
    Dec 22, 2013 at 0:11
  • Okay, thats good. NVidia has anti aliasing setting i think, try toggling that
    – KickAss
    Dec 22, 2013 at 0:34
  • Didn't change anything. Starting to thing ClearType is the culprit here.
    – user283755
    Dec 22, 2013 at 0:52
  • Can you post a screenshot and a photo of the screen? Dec 22, 2013 at 1:03

1 Answer 1

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Download CRU (Custom Resolution Utility) and change from "Default extension block" to "No extension block". Then, either reboot or run restart.exe/restart64.exe and you should have glorious 1920x1080@60hz over HDMI.

You should notice that the TV now detects the signal as "1920x1080@60hz" instead of "1080p 60hz".

Note that you'll lose audio with this method.

I just picked up a similar Sceptre TV (E246BV-FHD) with the same issue.

edit: I'm using this method with an AMD video card and am noticing that my display settings are being reset on every reboot (monitor positions/orientations). I'm looking into this now.

If you're still using a nvidia card, look at the "Change resolution" section of the nvidia control panel. There should be "Ultra HD, HD, SD" resolutions as well as "PC" ones. If you can select 1920x1080 in the PC section, it should work without needing to use CRU. My PC section maxed out at 1680x1050 for some reason.

You can try playing with the signal type, but it didn't help for me. And those options aren't present when in PC mode, so the colors are definitely off (not a big deal by itself, but it's noticeable in a multi-monitor setup). But that's for another day. At least everything is crystal clear now.

edit2: I reset all the profiles, rebooted, set all the positions and orientations, then modified again with cru. It looks like there's some sort of switching happening on startup. All good now.

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  • I'll try this out when I'm back home on Monday, thanks for the input!
    – user283755
    Jan 30, 2016 at 19:06
  • Thanks! This worked as well simply using VGA instead of HDMI. The problem seems to trace back to the only port being calibrated and tested with PCs being the VGA (the manual says nothing about being able to use HDMI with a PC, and they always refer the the VGA port as the "PC port"). I'm going to go ahead and mark this as the answer, as it the simplest software-side fix (and far less intrusive than targeting the text-rendering).
    – user283755
    Feb 4, 2016 at 2:17

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