PC on HDTV w. DCT5100?

[halb]

Can you use your HDTV as a computer monitor through the Motorola DCT5100?

If so, any advice on hardware and connections, etc. from those who are doing this?

[keving]

I'm trying to accomplish the same thing, and havn't had much sucess with my Philips 55PP9502.

The TV has a HD15 input, like the kind would find on the end of your monitor cable. This was the same kind of connector as on the back of my laptop, so I decided to get a cable and try it out. Bought an HD15 male-to-male, labelled as a KVM switchbox cable, and fired it up.

After tuning my TV to the correct input and cycling through all the output options of my laptop (there were only 3 that I could find: built-in panel, external connection, builtin AND external), but none of them actually produced a viewable signal. When I had the output method of my laptop to what I thought it should be, I see something that I could only describe using the verbage in my manual - grossly incorrect. :) Otherwise, there was no picture at all.

No amount of changing color space on the TV in conjunction with changes of resolution or refrash rates on the computer would make the signal come in properly. I can only imagine that while the two devices are sharing the same connector, the output that the TV is expecting is TOTALLY different from what the computer is actually sending.

According to the paperwork with my TV, it should be expecting a RGB signal (no mention of whether it's expecing H/V sync info). According to VGA specifications (in terms of computers at least), the computer is outputting RGB with H/V sync info.

That's about as far as I've gotten, and Philips hasn't been much of a help.

[keving]

http://www.digitalconnection.com/products/video/kdvtca2.asp

This may be an alternative. The only thing I wonder is how high-res it will actually be.

I seem to think that it would be on the order or what you would see with an S-Video cable, which wouldn't be very good (considering it costs $160). When I have the computer set even as low as 800x600, most text is still VERY fuzzy and hard to read over S-Video.

[keving]

HALB - Did you get anywhere with this?

I discovered some extra settings on my laptop that I thought would help, but they didn't. From my display properties, I went to "Advanced", and found a "Displays" tab. This listed my "Panel" (the built-in, fold-down display), "PC Monitor" (the HD-15 VGA connector on the back of the laptop), and "TV" (the SVideo connector).

By going into the properies of the "PC Monitor" display, I located 3 settings: H Sync, V Sync, and Composite. The options for H and V Sync were Positive (+) or Negative (+), and the options for Composite were On or Off. I was excitied when I found this, given that my initial ponderance was over the syncing from the laptop:

According to the paperwork with my TV, it should be expecting a RGB signal (no mention of whether it's expecing H/V sync info). According to VGA specifications (in terms of computers at least), the computer is outputting RGB with H/V sync info.

But, alas, after all 8 possible combinations of the H sync, V sync, and Composite options, I still wasn't getting a correct picture. There was color, but everything else was going WILD: like when you set your computer to display a resolution that the monitor doesn't support. I then retried all 8 combinations with the resolution at 640x480, something I assume the RPTV would support, it still doesn't work. :(

[keving]

Small, update on this: I decided to use my roommates computer instead of my laptop, and it worked somewhat.

When I first turned on the computer, and it was going through all it's POST and DOS-mode stuff, the 80x25 screen looked perfect on the RPTV (except for the fact that my TV automatically stretched it to 16:9 and I couldn't change that). But, as soon as the DOS-mode stuff was done and it started to get into Windows, I went back to the same out-of-sync issue.

I wish I could figure this out once and for all. :(

[HDFiend]

keving,

Have you attempted to use a timing software package like powerstrip on your PC? Try it out... there are some good sites and forums that detail how to set it up for use with an HDTV monitor. I found info out at avsforum a while back, but am not sure in exactly which thread.

search for something like "powerstrip timings", set the software up using a regular PC monitor according to what you find on the forum, and than connect it to the TV. Hope it works for you!

[keving]

I'll give that a shot! Thanks!

[keving]

Well, I got closer than I've ever been to having this work, but I still didn't acheive the results I'd hoped. The first thing I did was play with the horizontal refresh rate in both directions to find the different places along the way that were ALMOST right.

The first place was 31.75KHz. That was the recommended rate from a lot of sources, but it just wasn't right. The display shows 480p, and I could see the output from the computer, but it was flickery. No rolling/scrolling issues, but it was like watching a newscast where you can see a monitor in the background, and the monitor is all flickery. Plus, the convergence and geometry were WAY off. You could see distinct separation of all 3 colors at the bottom corners.

Thinking that there is different color convergence on EVERY input, I adjusted the convergence to what looked correct, but the geomotry was still off, and I had no way to correct that. So I had good color, but a non-rectangular screen. Then I came to find out that the convergence for my HD15 input is somehow linked to my component input, so I had thrown that convergence WAY off, and my changes needed to be undone. So 31.75KHz is a bust.

Way on up the range, I found something that looked equally as promising, but turned out to be equally as disappointing. I think it was 66.35KHz (somewhere around there). The display showed 1080i for this one. The color was PERFECT. Everything was delightfully crisp, but the screen rolled/scrolled both horizontally and vertically, so it was unusable. I tried going up and down in very small increments, but couldn't get it any better than this.

So, I think I'm about to give up on HTPC. :(

[bl5uami]

Ok I looked up the setting for my phillips 60pp9352 tv with the power strip program. Use 920X500 resolution with these timings:
Horizontal scan 33.860
Vertical 60.142
pixel clock should be around 40.090
the tv is very sensive and if you venture to far off from these specs it will not work. hopefully your video card will accept these
settings. if not you can try and update your drivers and maybe you will get lucky. dont give up it is totally cool having the computor on the tv even though the picture isn't perfect it is still cool. good luck