Making TV-out look decent??

[paqman]

Hey everyone, quick question here for any pro at making windows look semi decent on your TV. My question is in two parts, Media Center, and regular windows.

Part 1 (Media Center):
Most of Media Center looks ok, except for the fact that the menus seem a little too small. But I can live with that. It's watching videos and live TV that are bugging me. I don't have a widescreen TV, just a regular 32" CRT, that outputs "480i interlaced signals only." Anyway, even though it's not wide screen, I'm getting an extremely SQUARE picture on TV and videos. So square in fact that there are little black strips on the sides of the picture, and all the objects are squished a little taller. Not much mind you, but a enough to notice. The only way I can get thing to look proportionally correct is to set my tv to widescreen mode, which leaves the bars on the side, but squishes it down a little by putting the bars on top and bottom. That makes stuff look correct, but still not filling the whole screen.

Part 2(regular windows):
While making sure media center looks decent, I need to see if there's a way to get a somewhat regular desktop. I have my res settings all the way down to 640X480 which seems to be the only resolution that will give me a picture at all, and of course, the start bar is huge, and you can't see full windows. Anyway, it's annoying.

I'm running an ATI Radio x700 going through the s-video out to the component in on the TV. I think my box specs are in my sig. Let me know if you need any other info!
Thanks.

[zoltaaaan]

Try setting the display to the resolution in the ratio of your TV, and as low as possible,since you're using a CRT TV.

By the way, do you know how to set the S-Video to be the primary output. I want to connect my (desktop) computer to the TV without a monitor, but it only works until windows boots up, and I can't switch to it afterwards either.

I'm using regular XP, does Media Center edition fix any of this?

[paqman]

Originally Posted by zoltaaaan

Try setting the display to the resolution in the ratio of your TV, and as low as possible,since you're using a CRT TV.

By the way, do you know how to set the S-Video to be the primary output. I want to connect my (desktop) computer to the TV without a monitor, but it only works until windows boots up, and I can't switch to it afterwards either.

I'm using regular XP, does Media Center edition fix any of this?

Thanks for replying, I never actually figured it out, but reinstalling windows fixed it. And as far as setting s video as the primary output, I think that would depend on what video card you are using. Usually, you can just go into the settings, and set it up. And usually, windows should just detect it. And then of course, you may have to change the screen res for your TV to view it properly. Thanks.