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I am using a 32 inch LCD TV as a PC monitor. And I have NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS graphics card.

But unfortunately the highest resolution offered in my display settings is 1360x768.

I want to know whats the reason. I suspect the following 3:

  1. Limitation of LCD TV
  2. Limitation of Graphics Card
  3. Limitation of Driver Software / some settings fine-tuning

I wish to have much higher resolution than 1360x768.

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more information on your TV and how its connected to the computer would help –  Journeyman Geek Feb 23 '12 at 10:03
its connected via VGA cable TV has a VGA slot. what info u need abt TV, i will check and tell u. its made by ORZ thats all i know till now. and its written HDTV also has HDMI mode –  Thale Feb 23 '12 at 10:08
name and model number would help. Resolution would help more, but that isn't normally on monitors for some bizzare reason. I'd suggest trying HDMI to connect it. In addition HDTV can be 720P or 1080P, so i think i'm on the right track –  Journeyman Geek Feb 23 '12 at 10:11
720p. at present i dont have HDMI cable. i will try it in the morning.. –  Thale Feb 23 '12 at 10:15
in which case, the resolution you have makes complete sense. Its likely the TV –  Journeyman Geek Feb 23 '12 at 10:17
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4 Answers

LCDs generally tend to best run at a fixed resolution - which is the native resolution of the screen, and 1360x786 is a common one for '720P' screens. As long as your video card and system detected it properly, that should be the native resolution for the screen in question.

Video cards easily handle 1920x1080 or full HD, so with the latest drivers, your graphics card and driver shouldn't be the issue.

If its a full HD screen, playing around with your connection methods (HDMI is best, failing which DVI failing which VGA and so on) might help

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Isn't full HD screen means a 1920x1080 resolution and 1360x786 is OP native resolution? –  Phpdna Feb 23 '12 at 9:44
yup. He didn't explicitly state whats the native resolution of the screen, so i covered both scenarios - that thats as high as it goes, or that switching connection methods will help. I think it being a video card issue is unlikely –  Journeyman Geek Feb 23 '12 at 9:47
My driver in my flat screen can go higher then the native resolution. –  Phpdna Feb 23 '12 at 9:49
There's no point to that - LCDs look horrible at anything but native, and at best, you'd down sample the resolution to native anyway –  Journeyman Geek Feb 23 '12 at 9:51
Good point but isn't this a new feature? –  Phpdna Feb 23 '12 at 9:52
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The answer is fairly simple, but not always easy to explain. The highest resolution your TV supports is 720p (1360x768). Your video card (great card, card is not an issue) can support much higher resolutions, but has detected the highest resolution of your TV and therefore limited the settings to 1360x768, which is the best resolution your TV can display perfectly.

Anything higher would NOT make the picture better (since the number of pixels is limited by the TV hardware / screen) but it could (and would) make it worse since a resolution that is not an exact multiple of the hardware resolution would force a conversion that would sacrifice clarity for completeness.

Imagine trying to display a picture of the letter "T" with only 4 pixels. You would either wind up with two black on top and two white on bottom, or four black, or three black and one white. In any case, the "T" would not look like a "T", and would instead look like a dash or a square or an upside down "L". You could, however, display a "T" easily with 9 pixels (three black across the top row, one black in the middle position in the second row, and one black in the middle position in the third row).

As you increase the resolution, items on the screen get smaller, so the "T" would eventually get so small that there would only be 4 pixels trying to display it, resulting in an unreadable letter. Now imagine that with a face in a crowd, or the detail of a photo. Things start to look worse, not better, as the resolution increases beyond what the hardware can support.

My advice to you is to either stick with 1360x768, which is the absolute best your TV can do based on the laws of physics, or get a monitor or TV that can support a higher resolution.

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You didn't mentioned what is your native screen resolution but when you use a digital screen it's usually the first suspect on your list. But my new flat screen also offered a higher virtual resolution thus it can be also a driver problem. The Geforce 8400 GS should go much higher. I think it depends on how much video ram it has. You can use Powerstrip to control that. Maybe you can use Powerstrip to unlock higher resolution.

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David, I tried some stuff with Powerstrip for some time till now. What solution do u have in mind with Powerstring may be can u please tell me the details of setting it up?!!! –  Thale Feb 23 '12 at 11:28
I'm not an expert either but powerstrip is useful. I've read somewhere it can replace the native driver. But as @Journeyman mention unlocking higher resolution then the native can look really ugly. I wouldn't expect much and btw ACER has very good TNT-Panel for the low-midrange consumer budget. –  Phpdna Feb 23 '12 at 11:34
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Some LCD TVs publish sub-standard resolution over VGA and HDMI You can make custom resolution with nvidia driver, or use one offered by windows. e,g my philips HD TV shows 1280x600 as default, when it works just fine with 1360x768 but on the box it has 1366x768 in which case it gets resized with desktop sides out of screen... It is just trial and error...

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