TV as monitor

[Bruno_A]

Hello guys, so, I'm building a budget gaming pc and as I don't want to spend any more money on this build, I'll be using a TV as a monitor. When I first tried my 1080p TV as a monitor (connected via VGA), I noticed a problem, there was some black outlines in every icon and word like you can see in this picture which didn't happen when I connected a real old monitor (via VGA)  to my laptop, so I made a post about it on this forum when it happened, which was about a week ago and I learned that this thing happens because my 1080p TV does not meet the 4:4:4 chroma subsampling and after some research, I found a picture that was able to test it for me and it confirmed it. Later, I decided to test another TV I had and the rubber "protection" on the hdmi cable connector was too thick to fit in my TV, and as it was late and I didn't want to cut it I decided to test it via VGA and the picture was perfect, there was no black outlines anywhere, but today I decided to cut my hdmi cable in order to be able to fit it in the tv and it now has that 4:4:4 chroma subsampling problem, so, it seems that it's alright if I use my TV's via VGA, but if I use them via hdmi, it will have this problem. What can I do about this? I know that my desktop motherboard has a VGA connector, can I simply connect my TV to the motherboard VGA port? I can't test that because I'm still waiting for my motherboard to arrive. Anyway, is there anything I can do about this? 

 

Many thanks, Bruno.

[Princess Luna]

what is your GPU, you shouldnt connect your PC to a FHD TV using VGA as you will lose image sharpness and quality overall, just buy a new hdmi cable that fits in, those are super cheap and you get to carry audio along, in worst case scenario buy those DVI-HDMI cables if your GPU has a DVI output.

[Glenwing]

11 minutes ago, bruny06 said:

Hello guys, so, I'm building a budget gaming pc and as I don't want to spend any more money on this build, I'll be using a TV as a monitor. When I first tried my 1080p TV as a monitor (connected via VGA), I noticed a problem, there was some black outlines in every icon and word like you can see in this picture which didn't happen when I connected a real old monitor (via VGA)  to my laptop, so I made a post about it on this forum when it happened, which was about a week ago and I learned that this thing happens because my 1080p TV does not meet the 4:4:4 chroma subsampling and after some research, I found a picture that was able to test it for me and it confirmed it. Later, I decided to test another TV I had and the rubber "protection" on the hdmi cable connector was too thick to fit in my TV, and as it was late and I didn't want to cut it I decided to test it via VGA and the picture was perfect, there was no black outlines anywhere, but today I decided to cut my hdmi cable in order to be able to fit it in the tv and it now has that 4:4:4 chroma subsampling problem, so, it seems that it's alright if I use my TV's via VGA, but if I use them via hdmi, it will have this problem. What can I do about this? I know that my desktop motherboard has a VGA connector, can I simply connect my TV to the motherboard VGA port? I can't test that because I'm still waiting for my motherboard to arrive. Anyway, is there anything I can do about this? 

 

Many thanks, Bruno.

Any problems with VGA can't be related to chroma subsampling, because VGA encodes data in the RGB format, which can't be subsampled. 4:4:4 chroma or 4:2:2 chroma etc. only applies to Luma-based color models like YCbCr (which is used by HDMI). RGB images are always inherently "4:4:4".

[Bruno_A]

2 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

what is your GPU, you shouldnt connect your PC to a FHD TV using VGA as you will lose image sharpness and quality overall, just buy a new hdmi cable that fits in, those are super cheap and you get to carry audio along, in worst case scenario buy those DVI-HDMI cables if your GPU has a DVI output.

I'll be using a GTX 660, and I can buy a DVI to HDMI adapter, but my problem will still happen.

[porina]

In my experience many TVs will have picture sharpening which can result in halos around high contrast areas. Try looking through the TV options for sharpening, and turning them down to zero or off totally. Even if I'm wrong, shouldn't take long to try and find out if it helps.

[Jay_JWLH]

Unless you can disable it, using a TV for gaming may not be the best idea as it has input lag caused by the TV post processing the video. My TV for example has a gaming mode that I can't turn off, and it made me a horrible player when I tried it on Titanfall 2.

 

Also VGA is analogue, so unlike digital connections that have error correction built in, VGA can have errors. Not to mention limits. Stick with the best connection you can, such as HDMI.