Unable to track down problem with 640GT

[T Rush]

A few months ago I replaced a 8600GTS video card with a new 640GT
the old 8600GTS had a few minor issues that I was hoping to resolve, like: it had a strange over scan where the BIOS would not display correctly and be too large to fit on my 70" Sharp Aquos(also Win7 64 desktop had to be scaled down to fit on screen) when connected with a DVI to HDMI cable...as well as the video card was just slightly too long phiscally inside my THPC Silverstone case(the 6-pin power connector hitting the cabling for my 6 HDD RAID 5)
....so during the install of my RAID 5+1 drives I thought I'd also fix those two issues with a more modern shorter video card that: didn't use a supplementery 6-pin power connecror, had a dual slot fan cooler with exhaust out the back, native HDMI connection(so I could just use a HDMI-HDMI cable vs DVI-HDMI), and hopefully view the BIOS full screen vs cutoff during the RAID configuration setup

With the new 640GT I now had plenty of room to pull the HDD cages in and out if needed, and just using the same DVI-HDMI cable I now could see the full BIOS durring bootup, however the desktop still displayed 'cropped'
...tho the worst part was that now I was getting the Play Ready error on protected content(HBO channels) that 'video driver does not support playback...' Which I've had to deal with before and took all the persribled steps to fix...none of which worked....then I noticed that the Digital Cable Advisor was not passing all the test, and it said " upgrade to a video card that supports Hardware Acceleration " ugh (I was able to ignore that error in WMC with a bypass fix I found online, but changing the nVidia driver settings to 'performance single display mode' or other settings dealing with hardware acceleration that I could find didn't help...and I didn't see anywhere else where it really wasn't working)
...I tried older drivers and clearing DRM, un/reinstalling PlayReady Digital Cable Advisor HDHomerun and WMC etc, basicly everything besides a format/reinstall of Windows7 64 Ultimate...I'll also note that a tried a VGA cable at one point and had no issues with improper scaling for displaying BIOS or Desktop(i had used the same fix with the 8600GTS for problerly viewing the BIOS, tho it only has two DVI connections and used a DVI-VGA adaptor with a VGA cable, vs the 640GT which has one each of HDMI VGA DVI)

Anyway I quit HBO for awhile and just thought I'd focus on getting all my owned DVD/BluRay files setup on the RAID, then I'd format the old C drive install of the ageing Windows and start clean with the new video card, large storage array and possibly a new HDD for Windows at that time
...but now my Wife wanted to add Stars and Encore channels to our cable lineup(instead of HBO that we didn't watch very much because we own most of those movies DVD BluRay or Netflix) but those are copy protected DRM channels
...so I switched back to the old 8600GTS card

But what is the deal with the 640GT and no Hardware Acceleration in WMC?
and anyone have a clue on my scaling issues?

Sharp 70" Aquos LC-70LE650U
MSI N640GT - MD2GD3
AMD Phenom II X3 710
Gigabyte mobo w/ 8Gb RAM
Windows7 Ultimate 64bit w/ all updates

[crawfish]

I recently replaced a fanless GT430 with a fanless GT640, and it went fine. What is your driver version? Does the card appear correctly in Device Manager under Display Adapters?

[T Rush]

Yeah, I tried the latest drivers, and used default drivers from Windows update, then even an older driver from nVidia's website...all doing clean installs and rinse-n-repeat of the PlayReady DRM fixes

No issues in device manager

Drivers were
344.75 latest driver from nVidia and the first one I tried
Then whatever version Windows update is currently using
Oldest 327.24 found on nVidia's site for 640GT
and I just noticed that nVidia's site gave me 340.52 as the latest driver for the 8600GTS that is working fine now(but didn't try that with 640GT)

[crawfish]

Well, I'm currently on 344.75 with no problems to report. I didn't have to touch PlayReady, and I just install new drivers over old ones. I don't install any of the Nvidia crapware, just the video and audio drivers. I never let Windows Update install drivers. I don't let Windows Update auto-update, either. I wish I had something specific to tell you...

[T Rush]

Yes, seems very odd to me as well...as I don't have any trust issues with my nVidia hardware nor drivers(and I to install only what I need to use), tho that was the first thing I tried to "fix" in order to setup PlayReady and DRM cablities(which sadly I don't trust to not have "horable gliches " and issues for "advanced trusted users" vs missusers that these things should detour)... I was just trying to update to better more fitting hardware, and I realize that it is a privlige that we are allowed to view and buffer "copy protected DRM" cable programing dispersed at a price to our homes for our own enjoyment(note that this all comes to us at a heavy price that we are willing to pay for and we are not trying to freely share nor trade in any way) but this kind of shit just makes me want to torrent all this smack for free... The wronger they make the right way to do it suck, the more the people should change our laws to aid the noble and honest...not just promote pirates and profiteers

...oh ranting, but yes, my dart team just won tonight 14-1 after a big slump, and many oat sodas were brought forth

Yes it should work, I know that
...but why doesn't it?...keep coming with things I might have over looked, as things like this only prove to me that no one can possibly know it all, and even a dry duck can put the carge before the cart

[CyberSimian]

A few months ago I replaced a 8600GTS video card with a new 640GT. The old 8600GTS had a few minor issues that I was hoping to resolve, like: it had a strange over scan where the BIOS would not display correctly and be too large to fit on my 70" Sharp Aquos(also Win7 64 desktop had to be scaled down to fit on screen) when connected with a DVI to HDMI cable

I had exactly the same problems with the Nvidia 8600GTS that was supplied with my Dell XPS420 HTPC. During boot, the BIOS screens overscanned when connected to my Toshiba LCD TV via DVI->HDMI. The Windows desktop was the same.

When I eventually changed to an Nvidia GT610, the overscan on the BIOS screens during boot was fixed, but the overscan on the Windows desktop was not. On my TV, the task bar is almost completely hidden beneath the bezel of the TV. I fixed this by using the "Resize the desktop" facility of the "Nvidia Control Panel" application; instead of 1280x720, I ended up using 1220x690. Some points:

(1) I am sure that rescaling the image reduces sharpness somewhat (the pixel information is "smeared out"), so generally I would prefer to display images at their native resolution. But there does not seem to be any other solution with my particular TV.

(2) If you resize the desktop, and you want the WMC screen to be resized too, you need to go through WMC's "Screen Setup" procedure, and specifically select the screen size that you want to use.

(3) You may find that when your HTPC wakes to perform an unattended recording, it loses the modified screen size, and reverts back to the original resolution (complete with overscan). Setting the WMC screen size will cause WMC to use that screen size when it starts (eliminating the overscan). Alternatively, I discovered recently that performing scaling in the graphics card (and NOT the TV), avoids the modified screen size being lost when the HTPC wakes with the screen switched off. You set this option in the "Nvidia Control Panel" application.

In the UK we don't have DRM on our DVB-T broadcasts, but the "Nvidia Control Panel" claims that my GT610 and Toshiba TV with DVI->HDMI cable are "HDCP compliant", and so would presumably satisfy DRM requirements.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[T Rush]

I know that TVs did interpolate pixels to display images on screen somewhat, and you never quite got the sharp 1 to 1 view like a computer monitor does for text reading, but I just kinda assumed that today's "1080p" TVs would have a native resolution of 1920 pixels wide in 1080 rows tall; and thinking that a digital HDMI or DVI connection would be the most direct way to match that...but I'm almost ready to try counting how many pixels my TV screen really has

I actually think that my screen itself has more than 2073600 pixels(1920x1080) as at one point when the TV displayed what mode it was in when trying different drivers/cards/resolutions/cables the TV itself said it was using 1600x1200 when that was a default resolution the THPC used to boot Windows at, and it didn't display cropped or fuzzy, perfectly clear all the way to the top and bottom of the screen with no scaling or stretching in a more square(so it was a 'boxed' image on the screen that didn't reach the sides vs full wide-screen) maybe

Yeah, and I did work with the driver setting to adjust the size of the desktop down to fit the screen, giving me a lower resolution but didn't like that much...so I just kinda toughed it out on the desktop with only half the taskbar peeking up
WMC didn't seem too cropped, but its kinda hard to tell...and for the heck of it I ran the WMC display optimization wizard although I don't have the controls on the TV to fine adjust the position of the image like a computer monitor, but it strangely displayed the video of the people playing pool where you would line up the pool cues to the edge of the screen but with a huge amount of space to the sides, like the image needed to be zoomed way in, the video was even boxed with blue around it...so I moved on with my life

[T Rush]

oh crap!
I guess I just fixed the scaling issue
....just now I was poking around in the Sharp Aquos TV's settings menu and hidden in there a few menus deep was actually scaling settings, doh

on my TV it was in:
Menu > System Options > View Option > View Mode
then I have choices of :
Stretch, Dot-by-Dot, Smart Stretch, or Zoom
for some reason I always thought the "View Option" was not a clickable button to open a sub menu, and it was just a header for the sub menus listed under it
...gosh, I guess for the whole year and a half that I've owned this TV its been on "Stretch" by default this entire time, and maybe that was only active with the HDMI connection as the older VGA "PC input" I used sometimes and when I first got the TV I don't think had this problem

So that part of my problem is now solved
**I changed the TV's aspect setting to Dot-by-Dot**
...I can't believe I missed that easy fix all along

I know on other TVs I've used the zoom settings excessively to get the proper aspect(and it would always drive my Wife nuts as she didn't care about that, and wised I wouldn't always have to fix that when she didn't notice anything wrong) but on my main Home Theater big-screen TV(and even the screen I had before this one) they have never been hooked up to anything besides a HTPC box running WMC, so I only ever use the zoom in WMC to adjust aspect

#@π∆%€®¡$ GACK...I feel a little silly now, but glad its over