My PC ruined my TV

[Mysterio448]

Hello.

Years ago I decided to hook my PC up to my 50" Sony Grand WEGA KDF-50WE655. I had the computer set to a dual monitor set up that included the television and my regular computer monitor. Everything went fine at first, but one time I happened to use my PC to change the resolution on the TV to a resolution higher than 1080p, even though the TV itself only goes up to 1080i. After I did this, the TV's picture was noticeably ruined. It looked fine when watching something playing through the computer, but all the programs broadcast through the TV or through a DVD player looked pixelated, jagged, and blurry.

Question: Is there anything I can do to repair my TV's picture and/or restore it's native resolution? I appreciate any helpful input.

 

[Superkoopatrooper]

ya, you can change the resolution back to 1080p. any visual artifacts you say you have could be because of a faulty dvi / vga wire. last week i was a little nervous as I was gaming and blue pixels popped all around the screen like artifacting when it all ended up being the dvi cord being 3 years old

 

[InvalidError]

That TV has WXGA-like (1386x788) native resolution. If you feed it signals at any other resolution, the TV will have to re-scale that image and this may have various side-effects. Could it be that the TV has always been this way but you simply did not notice it before?

If you messed around with input processing options, you might have changed something there that you forgot about.

There isn't much the PC can do to damage your TV. I suppose there is a slight possibility that you damaged the TV by forcing your GPU to send signals your TV was not designed for. I doubt there is anything you can do about it in this case since the damage would be somewhere in the TV's image processing/scaling circuitry.

 

[Mysterio448]

ya, you can change the resolution back to 1080p. any visual artifacts you say you have could be because of a faulty dvi / vga wire. last week i was a little nervous as I was gaming and blue pixels popped all around the screen like artifacting when it all ended up being the dvi cord being 3 years old

I don't have a dvi or vga wire hooked up to the TV. I had my PC hooked up to the TV with component cables, and there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the cables.

 

[Mysterio448]

That TV has WXGA-like (1386x788) native resolution. If you feed it signals at any other resolution, the TV will have to re-scale that image and this may have various side-effects. Could it be that the TV has always been this way but you simply did not notice it before?

If you messed around with input processing options, you might have changed something there that you forgot about.

There isn't much the PC can do to damage your TV. I suppose there is a slight possibility that you damaged the TV by forcing your GPU to send signals your TV was not designed for. I doubt there is anything you can do about it in this case since the damage would be somewhere in the TV's image processing/scaling circuitry.

I had a CRT computer monitor hooked up to the computer that was capable of showing very high resolutions. I think I used the NVIDIA display software to change the TV's resolution.

 

[InvalidError]

I had a CRT computer monitor hooked up to the computer that was capable of showing very high resolutions.

CRTs are analog. They can show any resolution up to whatever their input amplifier bandwidth and H/V scanning circuitry can handle.

On LCD/Plasma/OLED/DLP/etc., individual pixels are etched into the substrate so those displays are incapable of displaying any resolution other than the resolution they are designed for. The display panel's image processor takes your signal and if the input resolution is different from the display's native resolution, it will try to re-scale the image to make it fit, which may distort the image, make it more grainy, blurry or other "defects" depending on the source resolution, content, re-scaling algorithms, etc.

Ideally, you want to feed displays at their native resolution to bypass the scaler and get the sharpest image possible.

 

[Mysterio448]

I had a CRT computer monitor hooked up to the computer that was capable of showing very high resolutions.

CRTs are analog. They can show any resolution up to whatever their input amplifier bandwidth and H/V scanning circuitry can handle.

On LCD/Plasma/OLED/DLP/etc., individual pixels are etched into the substrate so those displays are incapable of displaying any resolution other than the resolution they are designed for. The display panel's image processor takes your signal and if the input resolution is different from the display's native resolution, it will try to re-scale the image to make it fit, which may distort the image, make it more grainy, blurry or other "defects" depending on the source resolution, content, re-scaling algorithms, etc.

Ideally, you want to feed displays at their native resolution to bypass the scaler and get the sharpest image possible.

I was thinking about taking the TV to a repair shop. Is there anything they can do to restore the TV's resolution?

 

[InvalidError]

I was thinking about taking the TV to a repair shop. Is there anything they can do to restore the TV's resolution?

Bringing it to a repair shop will probably cost you more than the TV is worth.

If you have gone through every input option you can find and still cannot find any setting that helps, try finding out how to enter your TV's diagnostic/service menu and do a factory-reset from there. If that still does not help, your trip to the repair shop will probably cost you $300+. Better off using that money to buy a brand-new $800 Full-HD TV that can take 1080p60 native resolution.