Win 7 is full screen but not WMC?

[rc51jim]

Been using W7MC for a couple years, mainly for OTA using Hauppauge card, everything worked perfect.
Recently moved to an are without good OTA reception, so had to get cable.
Took the time to rebuilt my HTPC machine after installing a Ceton card due to the fun DRM issues.
Managed to get it working but now WMC is not full screen. I am using the onboard graphics ATI Radeon 4200 with their Catalyst drivers installed.
Have a Panasonic Plasma connected via HDMI and Windows displays 1080P properly with the Catalyst manager set to overscan 0(I have always had to do this). But now when I start WMC it has a box around it.
Not sure what the problem is, this has worked perfect for a couple years until I re-installed Windows to fix the DRM. Only thing I can think of is the driver version I am using now is newer that what I was using before.

Any thoughts??

Jim

[lithium630]

The settings are for each individual resolution. So say you normally run your desktop at 720x480 and Media Center at 1920x1080 then you need to temporarily switch the desktop to 1920x1080 so you can adjust the overscan.

[rc51jim]

Hmm

I do have my desktop set to 1920x1080 and have to use the overscan to get it to be full screen.
So I go from my full screen desktop and open Media Center (which is also set to 1080P via the task section in MC), it does not fill the screen.

[richard1980]

For clarification, CCC doesn't adjust overscan, it adjusts underscan (from 0% to 15%). And what you are describing in WMC is called underscan (overscan would be the exact opposite, where the edges of the screen extend out past the edges of the display).

Is there a way you can go full screen in WMC and then ALT+TAB to CCC and make the adjustment (this should keep WMC full screen and just bring CCC in front of it)?

[rc51jim]

Yes the alt tab to CCC does work and I can adjust the underscan so WMC is full screen. But after I apply changes and click away from CCC WMC automatically rescales to having the box around all sides.
Very frustrating, especially since it worked perfectly before this reformat and new driver.

[rc51jim]

OK so resolved.
Evidently uninstalling and re-installing the driver 3 times makes the difference.
How fun is that.

[DrHow]

I also experience what I suppose is a variation on this problem. WMC is not using all the scan lines, though it is using the full width of my display. I have a 768 line plasma display. My onboard GPU from AMD has ATI Radeon HD 9270 capability.

When I play recordings from non-encrypted channels with other players like WinTV, VLC, or even Windows Media Player, I do NOT see the symptoms I am going to describe below in more detail. In full screen mode, they always use the full height of the display. The problem is definitely specific to WMC.

The symptoms vary. However, it only happens when the format of the program being played is 720p or 1080i and WMC is in full screen mode. If it is 480i, there are no unused raster scan lines. (This is even true when my local cable provider inserts a 480i commercial in an otherwise HD broadcast.) With the HD sources, the number of unused lines varies - I'd guess from 6 to 12 lines. More often than not, the top two lines and the bottom two lines are gray, while the other unused lines are black. (I have examined closely by using the magnifier.) However, the gray lines can come and go randomly and individually, though the bottom one is usually present. A partial explanation (but still incomplete) of the disappearing top gray line may be that the entire picture occasionally jumps up or down by two pixels. I have seen this happen outside of WMC, so I cannot blame WMC for the occasional jumps. (These are not very objectionable, but I would like to understand them also.) The frequently large number of unused scan lines are definitely a WMC symptom.

The gray lines are an annoying distraction to me. I would really like to get rid of them. When the program is dark, they look white. Switching to another player is not an option for copy protected stations, which are most of them. Even for the non-encrypted stations, the WMC player has features I prefer - use of a lightweight remote with good navigation features being one of them.

An inconvenient partial solution to the problem which I have discovered is to not run WMC in full screen mode. You can make the window so large that the area inside the window frame is actually bigger than the display. I can then drag the bottom line of the window's title bar up to the top of the screen. (Fortunately, WMC does not adhere to the normal Windows 7 behaviour of automatically going into full screen mode when you do this.) This results in only one unused scan line - and even that goes away some of the time. (I have also found this technique useful for cropping scrolling tickers at the bottom of the screen, which I usually find objectionable.) It is not perfect because of the vestigial task bar (2 pixels) which shows when not in full screen mode. I have minimized that problem by moving the task bar from bottom to side, where I find the unused (now vertical) lines less objectionable.

If anyone has any insight on how to get WMC to use all scan lines in full screen mode, I would really like to know about it.

[richard1980]

@DrHow I'm betting the problem is your display's native resolution compared to the resolution WMC is sending to the TV. You have 768 lines, which means the native resolution is probably either 1366x768 (16:9, square pixels) or 1024x768 (4:3, square pixels or 16:9, non-square pixels). Based on the fact that the TV content is filling the display width, but not the display height, I'd say your native resolution is 1024x768 and WMC is set to output 720p, which would be 1280x720. A 1280x720 image will extend wider than your display (thus filling the screen side-to-side), but won't be as tall (leaving unused lines at the top and bottom). Additionally, if there are only 6-12 lines being unused, it also sounds like WMC is overscanning the output image. Go to Tasks>Settings>TV>Configure your TV or monitor, and be sure to select "Television" as your display type. This will set WMC to 0% overscan. Also set WMC to output the native resolution of the display, which should cause WMC to scale the video signal properly. Also make sure your display is in 1:1 pixel matching mode (thus ensuring the TV doesn't overscan the incoming signal...consult your user's manual....it probably won't say 1:1 pixel matching, but the idea is that one incoming pixel is mapped to one physical pixel on the screen...if you can't find it, post your display model number and I'll find the manual online and find the setting). Doing all of this will get you as close as you can possibly get to a full screen image.

Of course, the best solution would be to buy a display with a native resolution that is more compatible with TV signals...meaning either a true 1080p or 720p display ("true" 1080p means a native resolution of 1920x1080, and "true" 720p means a native resolution of 1280x720).

As for you "pixel jumping" issue, do you have any anti-image retention settings turned on in the display? I know on my Panasonic plasma, there's a pixel orbiter feature that moves the picture around on the screen...very annoying IMO, so I just turn it off in the TV menu.

[DrHow]

I'm betting the problem is your display's native resolution compared to the resolution WMC is sending to the TV. You have 768 lines, which means the native resolution is probably either 1366x768 (16:9, square pixels) or 1024x768 (4:3, square pixels or 16:9, non-square pixels). Based on the fact that the TV content is filling the display width, but not the display height, I'd say your native resolution is 1024x768 and WMC is set to output 720p, which would be 1280x720. A 1280x720 image will extend wider than your display (thus filling the screen side-to-side), but won't be as tall (leaving unused lines at the top and bottom). Additionally, if there are only 6-12 lines being unused, it also sounds like WMC is overscanning the output image. Go to Tasks>Settings>TV>Configure your TV or monitor, and be sure to select "Television" as your display type. This will set WMC to 0% overscan. Also set WMC to output the native resolution of the display, which should cause WMC to scale the video signal properly. Also make sure your display is in 1:1 pixel matching mode (thus ensuring the TV doesn't overscan the incoming signal...consult your user's manual....it probably won't say 1:1 pixel matching, but the idea is that one incoming pixel is mapped to one physical pixel on the screen...if you can't find it, post your display model number and I'll find the manual online and find the setting). Doing all of this will get you as close as you can possibly get to a full screen image.

I appreciate the fact that you are trying to help, but most of what you are saying does not make sense or does not apply:

The native resolution of my set is 1366x768, which is actually normal for a 16:9 display sold as a "720p" set. (It is actually difficult to find a TV that really has 720 lines, though retailers rarely call attention to this fact on so called 720p sets.) I am configured correctly for such a display, and it is working quite well with Windows 7. (Text does not look nearly as good if I configure Windows 7 to output at any other resolution.) My set is an 50" LG model 50P J350 purchased a little over a year ago. It provides a status display which shows the format of the signal it is receiving on HDMI input, and it does say "1366x768" when I have selected the input from my HTPC. (It does show 1080, 720, or 480 lines when I select the input from my DVR.)

You are ignoring the fact that the problem I describe does not occur with other players, including Windows Media Player. Playbacks look perfect with that, VLC, and WinTV.

It does not strike me that WMC is overscanning. If anything, I would say that it is underscanning in the vertical direction. I suppose the difference here is that you incorrectly inferred that my set is 1024x768.

Just to make sure, I repeated the TV/monitor configuration wizard. As far as I could tell, nothing changed. During playback of an HD recording, the gray lines at the top and bottom of the screen remain.

You are ignoring the fact that I am more concerned about the presence (normally) of the gray pairs of scan lines at the top and bottom of the screen than I am about any adjacent unused black lines at the top or bottom. Your analysis also ignores the fact that the gray lines do not appear when the format of the show is 480i.

Of course, the best solution would be to buy a display with a native resolution that is more compatible with TV signals...meaning either a true 1080p or 720p display ("true" 1080p means a native resolution of 1920x1080, and "true" 720p means a native resolution of 1280x720).

The above makes little sense. Clearly a 768 line TV is perfectly compatible with both 720p and 1080i format _signals_ or the manufacturers would not be selling such TVs. (Apparently the 768 line 'standard' is a bit of a historical accident. Because of a VGA precedent, there were already chips to support 768 lines and not 720 lines.) Even when a display has 1080 lines, it is still necessary to rescale 720p sources. The largest fraction of what I watch is 720p; but the problem I see in WMC exists with either HD format.

As for you "pixel jumping" issue, do you have any anti-image retention settings turned on in the display? I know on my Panasonic plasma, there's a pixel orbiter feature that moves the picture around on the screen...very annoying IMO, so I just turn it off in the TV menu.

Now this is interesting input. I was certain that the jumping was attributable to something outside of WMC. However, I was not certain about whether it was my GPU or my TV that was doing it. Now you tell me that some TV sets have such a feature. Thus I can now suppose that the LG has the feature but that LG did not make it configurable. (I have been thoroughly through its configuration menus, and there was no option with a description even vaguely resembling "anti-image retention" even though it is a plasma display.) It does not really bother me that much, but it can explain why the top pair of gray lines can disappear sometimes. (It does not explain why I most often see the gray lines simultaneously at both the top and the bottom.)

[richard1980]

First, I'm not ignoring anything. I was trying to solve your problem to the best of my ability with the limited amount of information you provided. Had I known more information about your display, I would have been able to provide a better answer. But since I didn't, I tried to help with the information I had. My response would make sense if your display had a native resolution of 1024x768, but since it doesn't, of course my answer doesn't make sense. Now that I know the native resolution of your device, I can provide a better response, and explaining my previous response is a waste of time since most of the post applied to the wrong resolution.

The horizontal resolution of your screen is 1365, not 1366 (at least that's what the spec sheet on LG's website shows). That is definitely not a common resolution for display devices, but does make a bit more sense (you'll see why later in this post). 1366x768 was a common resolution back in the 720p days, but we've been in 1080p territory for quite some time now, and 1366x768 is not a common resolution for 1080p displays. And to be quite honest (and I sincerely don't mean to offend you or anyone else), it doesn't matter if it's a common resolution or not because no decent TV worth owning has 1366x768 resolution, even back in the 720p days. Why? Because it's a 16:9 resolution that doesn't allow clean conversion from common 16:9 broadcast resolutions. In other words, it's not truly compatible with TV signals. To explain what I mean, look at the common 16:9 signal resolutions...1920x1080 and 1280x720. You can convert 1920x1080 to 1280x720 by deleting every 3rd row and column from the image, and you can convert 1280x720 to 1920x1080 by inserting a blended row and column every 2 rows/columns (or by doubling the axis resolutions, thus converting one pixel into 4 pixels, and deleting every 4th row/column) . However, you can't convert a 1920x1080 or 1280x720 image to 1366x768 (or 1365x768) this way. No matter how you do it, you always end up with a statement that looks like this: "Add/remove 1 row/column every (insert non-whole number here) rows/columns".

The reason the conversion works for 640x480 content is very simple. 1366x768 is just 1024x768 with 171 extra columns of pixels added to both sides. To maintain the 4:3 aspect ratio, the 640x480 image is actually scaled to 1024x768. Scaling 640x480 to 1024x768 is easy...double the number of pixels for each axis (to 1280x960, thus converting one pixel into 4 pixels) and subtract 1 row/column for every 5 rows/columns, or just insert 3 rows/columns for every 5 rows/columns in the signal. To stretch the image to fit the width of the screen (convert 1024 to 1366), you really need to insert insert 342 columns, but that doesn't really work out well, so you insert 1 column every 3 columns, for a total of 341 inserted columns and a final width of 1365 pixels. You end up one column short for a display with 1366 columns, which is hardly noticeable, and you won't notice it on your TV at all because you have 1365 columns, the exact number of columns in the new signal. So to put it simply, 1365x768 and 1366x768 are resolutions really best suited for converting 640x480 content, but they are terrible resolutions for HD content.

As for the gray lines and why you only see them in WMC, I'd guess it has something to do with the way WMC is trying to convert the broadcast signals to your display's native resolution. Like I said, it's not a clean conversion, and whatever method you use will end up being "wrong". Perhaps the other video players you use are overscanning the resulting image slightly so that the "bad" information in the resulting image is dropped out of view.

My original solution of buying a new display device still stands as the best option. The 2nd best option to do what you want would be to overscan WMC slightly and see if that helps. Try going back through display setup and select something other than Television and see if the result is more appealing for you. You could also try creating a custom resolution in your GPU driver and see if WMC will let you select that custom resolution in TV setup....maybe add 6-12 rows. I'm not sure if that will work, but it might.

[DrHow]

@richard1980 - I'm sorry, but I think that you are excessively hung up on the importance of scaling by a rational factor with a small denominator. If I run WMC (or any other player) not in full screen mode, it can scale the image by a completely arbitrary factor, and I see no objectionable artifacts which result from doing so. In particular, WMC uses all lines inside the window frame and it does not introduce any gray ones. I believe that modern scaling algorithms are, in general, much more sophisticated than the simple examples you talked about. (Indeed, some of the processing my GPU can and does do is vastly more sophisticated than simple scaling. Mere deinterlacing is a more difficult problem than rescaling.) Consider that the difference between overscanning or not implies a small difference in the scaling factor, which will not result in a nice ratio of small integers.

Your attitude about 768 line TV sets vs. 1080 line sets sounds to me more elitist than anything else. The truth is that there are still plenty of so called 720p sets on the market, and they virtually all have 768 line displays. When I bought my set, I looked very carefully at 720p sets and 1080p sets side-by-side, and I was hard pressed to see any difference at all. (For various reasons, I claim to have a much more discerning eye concerning such things than does your average consumer.) So I could not justify the higher price of a 1080p set. (For the monitor on my desktop computer, which I sit very close to, it does make a difference; and I am glad to have a 1080 line display in that context.)

The fact that other players, including Microsoft's own Windows Media Player, do not exhibit the same problem in full screen mode tells me that this is a problem with Windows Media Center, not my setup. (Even WMC does not exhibit the problem with a 480i source.) Thus I was hoping for a way to fix WMC; and a recommendation to buy an expensive new TV set is not very constructive, since I am perfectly happy with the set. I am just not happy with the way WMC happens to be using it in full screen mode for HD format data streams. I would rather live with the problem than invest in a new TV right now, but I was hoping that I would not have to live with the problem. Furthermore, I do not believe that plugging in a 1080p display would solve the problem anyway. See below.

The only other options for a resolution at which I can drive my TV are 720 lines or 1080 lines. The results of doing so are totally unacceptable. Text output from Windows 7 becomes much less crisp at those resolutions. Indeed, the OS itself strongly recommends to drive the display at 768 lines. There is no real option here. However, as an experiment, I tried driving it at 1080 lines, in which case WMC has no way of knowing that my display has only 768 lines. Nevertheless, it made no difference - there were still unused lines in full screen mode, some black some gray. I also tried 720 lines, in which case there were fewer unused lines, but the objectionable gray lines were still present. FWIW, I am running the latest drivers for my GPU from AMD (ATI).

Again, I do not believe there is any problem with my hardware setup. I believe that there is a problem with WMC software, and I was hoping for a way to fix that. Can anyone help?

[richard1980]

In particular, WMC uses all lines inside the window frame and it does not introduce any gray ones.

That's because WMC overscans in windowed mode. Only when you go fullscreen can you get 0% overscan.

I believe that modern scaling algorithms are, in general, much more sophisticated than the simple examples you talked about.

What I described is a process known as nearest-neighbor interpolation, and yes, it's very simple. The reason I used it as the example is because it is very simple and easy to understand why scaling to oddball resolutions isn't always perfect. What algorithm is used is pretty much irrelevant because even with a more complex algorithm, perfect scaling is impossible. There will always be something wrong with the image, whether you notice it or not.

Your attitude about 768 line TV sets vs. 1080 line sets sounds to me more elitist than anything else.

My attitude is about 768 lines in general, and has nothing to do with 1080 line display devices. It has to do with how many lines are in the video signal compared to how many lines are on the display device. A 720p TV is perfectly acceptable as long as it has 720 lines. Not 719, not 721, and not 768. 720. I don't care how many devices on the market have 768 lines, that doesn't make it correct.

The fact that other players, including Microsoft's own Windows Media Player, do not exhibit the same problem in full screen mode tells me that this is a problem with Windows Media Center, not my setup.

I never said WMC isn't doing something wrong. In fact, I specifically said "As for the gray lines and why you only see them in WMC, I'd guess it has something to do with the way WMC is trying to convert the broadcast signals to your display's native resolution." In other words, I believe the scaling algorithm WMC uses to scale to 1365x768 may be the culprit.

Even WMC does not exhibit the problem with a 480i source.

I explained why in my previous post. Scaling the 480i source to fit your screen is relatively easy.

Furthermore, I do not believe that plugging in a 1080p display would solve the problem anyway. See below.

How about trying it before jumping to conclusions? And your explanation below has nothing to do with connecting a 1080p display to your PC and setting up WMC to output a 1080p signal. Have you stopped to ask yourself why nobody else is complaining about this issue? Could it be because the rest of us don't experience the issue? And why don't we experience the issue? Could it be that the rest of everyone has a proper 720p, 1080i, or 1080p display?

The only other options for a resolution at which I can drive my TV are 720 lines or 1080 lines. The results of doing so are totally unacceptable. Text output from Windows 7 becomes much less crisp at those resolutions. Indeed, the OS itself strongly recommends to drive the display at 768 lines. There is no real option here. However, as an experiment, I tried driving it at 1080 lines, in which case WMC has no way of knowing that my display has only 768 lines. Nevertheless, it made no difference - there were still unused lines in full screen mode, some black some gray. I also tried 720 lines, in which case there were fewer unused lines, but the objectionable gray lines were still present. FWIW, I am running the latest drivers for my GPU from AMD (ATI).

Windows 7 resolution adjustments have nothing to do with WMC. They are two independent adjustments and changing one has no effect on the other. Leave the desktop resolution at 1365x768, and adjust the WMC resolution by going through display setup in WMC. You could even try setting WMC to proper 720p, which should leave the 720p-to-768p conversion to your TV, which hopefully does a better job than WMC.

[DrHow]

Windows 7 resolution adjustments have nothing to do with WMC. They are two independent adjustments and changing one has no effect on the other. Leave the desktop resolution at 1365x768, and adjust the WMC resolution by going through display setup in WMC. You could even try setting WMC to proper 720p, which should leave the 720p-to-768p conversion to your TV, which hopefully does a better job than WMC.

Finally, we get to an important crux of my problem. I was operating under the misconception that WMC full-screen resolution was always the same as current desktop resolution. (Indeed, that is how the other players which I have referenced behave.) The default full-screen resolution for WMC is the desktop resolution. So when the wizard proposed changing the resolution, I assumed incorrectly that it was offering to change the desktop resolution (as CCC can without using the desktop resolution tweaker provided by Windows 7). I was certain that I did not want to mess with my desktop resolution, so I said "no" and proceeded.

Now that I understand this important distinction, what I have been trying to do is to get WMC to use 1080p as its full-screen resolution. (I agree that one should try to minimize the number of rescaling steps. I figure that scaling 720p up to 1080p on my computer and back down to 768 lines in the TV will do less damage to 720p sources than scaling down to 720p on my computer and back up to 768 in the TV will do to 1080i or 1080p sources. What would be better yet is to get WMC to output in the same format as is associated with the encoding it is playing and let the TV do all the rescaling.) When I set the 1080p resolution for WMC full-screen mode, it does get rid of the gray lines. Yay! Unfortunately, I wind up in the significant underscan situation (on all sides) as described by the original poster, rc51jim, for this thread. I believe that, in the long run, such considerable underscan will not be good for my plasma TV. (FWIW, I also see the underscan when outputting 720p.)

My efforts to cure the underscan have been considerable and unsuccessful. rc51jim's post clued me in to the fact that the ATI (AMD) Catalyst Control Center has an adjustment for this. I found it; but there is much about this functionality that still has me confused. For one thing, the Scaling Options tab is grayed out for 768 lines; it just defaults to 0. (I was hoping to force some overscan in 768 line mode to get rid of the gray lines.) I can adjust the underscan in 1080p mode (or 720p). However, CCC insists on operating in desktop resolution mode; so, to adjust the underscan in 1080p mode, I must let CCC put output into 1080p mode for the desktop. Then Scaling Options works, and I can get rid of the underscan - in fact, achieving a very slight bit of overscan. With such a configuration, WMC in full-screen mode does use my entire display and there are no gray lines. However, my desktop is then in 1080p mode, which I don't like. If I then try to change the desktop resolution back to 768 lines, that works OK for the desktop; but, when I go back into WMC full-screen mode, the underscan adjustment for 1080p (which I do get) has disappeared and I am back into excessive underscan. In short, I cannot achieve elimination of underscan in WMC 1080p full-screen mode when operating the desktop at 768 lines. FWIW, I did update CCC to the latest edition yesterday.

(Another confusing thing was that CCC was offering multiple 1080p modes, not all of which admitted rescaling. Furthermore, WMC was not, by default, seeing the 1080p mode which I could rescale. WMC was only seeing a version for 59.94hz (as I recall), which I assumed CCC was rounding up to 60hz. But when I selected "Show all resolutions" in WMC, a true 60hz version appeared and that was the one that admitted rescaling.)

I tried for a while to live with 1080p for the desktop. I really don't like it, as fonts do not look good. Furthermore, it is my impression that the TV picture is not as sharp as when WMC is outputting directly in 768 line mode. (I'm not positive about this; but experimenting is fairly time consuming, and side-by-side is impossible.)

For a while there, I thought I was getting very close to a complete satisfactory solution; but I have not quite made it. I am hoping that there is still something else that I am missing and that someone can enlighten me.

Currently, I am most happy keeping everything at 768 line resolution and operating WMC in windowed mode, which allows me to achieve some overscan by making the area inside the window frame be bigger than the display. (I can almost always push the entirety of the window title bar above the top of the screen. Worst case is a single visible scan line from the title bar.) Setting this up is a bit tedious and the setting is not preserved if I close or even just minimize WMC, so it is a bit of a hassle. However, I do like it for cropping a ticker at the bottom of the picture by going to a lot of overscan. (I hate those tickers, as they are distracting, telling me things I don't want to know (like scoring updates in games I am recording) or telling me the same 'news' over and over.)

BTW - I apologize for the significant delay between richard1980's last response and this response from me. I had been away for a while; and when I finally was able to check back, I was happy to discover that richard1980 had enlightened me about the distinction between desktop resolution and WMC full-screen resolution.

[lithium630]

Windows 7 resolution adjustments have nothing to do with WMC. They are two independent adjustments and changing one has no effect on the other.

Sounds familiar...

[richard1980]

What would be better yet is to get WMC to output in the same format as is associated with the encoding it is playing and let the TV do all the rescaling.

I used to have this ability when I had a cable box, and I think it would actually be fairly simple for Microsoft to implement this option, but good luck getting them to do it. However, the TV I was using at the time did this thing where it would blank out when resolution changed...it made channel surfing a bit slow, but I'm sure this was just an effect of that specific TV.

but, when I go back into WMC full-screen mode, the underscan adjustment for 1080p (which I do get) has disappeared and I am back into excessive underscan. In short, I cannot achieve elimination of underscan in WMC 1080p full-screen mode when operating the desktop at 768 lines. FWIW, I did update CCC to the latest edition yesterday.

I found this: http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview. ... did=107707. Not sure if it will help you.

(Another confusing thing was that CCC was offering multiple 1080p modes, not all of which admitted rescaling. Furthermore, WMC was not, by default, seeing the 1080p mode which I could rescale. WMC was only seeing a version for 59.94hz (as I recall), which I assumed CCC was rounding up to 60hz. But when I selected "Show all resolutions" in WMC, a true 60hz version appeared and that was the one that admitted rescaling.)

Just a bit of an explanation: In the US, TV signals are not truly 60 Hz (progressive) or 30 Hz (interlaced). The frame rate actually used in both cases is the result of multiplying 60 or 30 by by 1000 and then dividing by 1001 to come up with the final broadcast frame rate (30 * 1000 / 1001 ≈ 29.97 and 60 * 1000 / 1001 ≈ 59.9401) (the technical reason for this has something to do with interference with the audio signal in the broadcast). In other parts of the world, 60 Hz is actually truly 60.0000 Hz. That's why you'll see two different refresh rates in WMC (and probably in the GPU software). GPUs commonly list 60.0000 as 60 Hz and 59.9401 Hz as 59 Hz.

I tried for a while to live with 1080p for the desktop. I really don't like it, as fonts do not look good. Furthermore, it is my impression that the TV picture is not as sharp as when WMC is outputting directly in 768 line mode. (I'm not positive about this; but experimenting is fairly time consuming, and side-by-side is impossible.)

Your impression is likely correct. The conversion from 1080p to 768p is going to result in slight picture quality flaws, which you won't have when you set the desktop to 768p.

Setting this up is a bit tedious and the setting is not preserved if I close or even just minimize WMC, so it is a bit of a hassle.

If you can't figure out how to get the underscan settings to retain for WMC 1080p, and you want to continue using this method, check out a program called UltraMon. It will allow you to set window positions on a per-application basis (right click the application shortcut and go to the UltraMon Window tab).

[DrHow]

My full-screen symptom disappeared. I noticed this after updating the drivers for my AMD Radeon graphics hardware. So the gray lines cannot be attributed solely to WMC, if at all. Unfortunately, I have a lot of underscan in full-screen mode, so I am still not happy with it. I wonder if it is possible to set up a special overscanned 1360x768 mode for WMC without overscanning the desktop (which would cause problems).

[DrHow]

Oops! I misinterpreted my symptoms. I discovered that full screen resolution had somehow switched to 1080p. I certainly did nothing in WMC to cause this, so I had not suspected. (I just accidentally hit the remote button that causes my TV to display the resolution it is receiving.)

So I thought, "OK, maybe I can make overscanning stick now on the 1080p full-screen resolution." In CCC, I enabled rescaling and it did not seem to give me a way to do overscanning with the particular choice of resolution. Then I tried to play a copy-protected movie and WMC started announcing that the video hardware did not support playback of copy-protected material. I disabled rescaling, and that did not fix it. Nor did reloading WMC. I reinstalled the AMD driver software, and WMC started playing copy-protected programs again. Furthermore, WMC's full screen resolution was back to 768 lines as before the second to last installation of the graphics driver.

The gray lines are back!

I won't be enabling rescaling again. After two installations of the new driver software, I am back to where I started. I note no differences now. Big no-op.