Powerstrip - Tweaking and Conclusion

Tweaking Section
First of all, you may (especially with an RPTV) have to compromise between resolutions and amounts of over-scan and/or under-scan on both horizontal and vertical resolutions. Much depends on your display.

Terms

• Horizontal - wide, narrow - left, right.
• Vertical - tall, short - up down.
• Over-scan - The desktop or other video input is too wide or tall for the display, and is "cropped", or sort of, "past the top/bottom/sides of the display".
• Under-scan - The visual content is too short, or too narrow to fit the display.
• Position - The screen is not centered!

Making Adjustments:
Setting the proper scan rates - Important!
Set the Horizontal scan rate to 33.75 and hit your "Tab" key (540p/1080i).

Set the "Total lines" in the "Vertical geometry" section to "563"(540p/1080i)

Note: Set this for 525 for 480p/960i. See below...

Why? See this excellent guide at Keohi HDTV: http://www.keohi.com/keohihdtv/experttips/markrehjon/htpc_superguide.html

Will other totals work? Sure, depending on the display. Notice how above, the Horizontal scan rate is 33.75 and the vertical scan rate is 59.94? This is ideal for "standard" HDTV 540p/1080i. Use settings as close as possible to these for 540p/1080i! Reread the above guide if you have questions.

[note] Don't save this setting until you verify you can "get to" the taskbar! Make enough vertical (up/down) adjustments until you can see enough of it to get back into Powerstrip, etc.

Tip: It is probably a very good idea to check the "Lock scan frequencies" checkbox at this point. This will keep your Horizontal scan rate locked at 33.750 kHz and your Vertical scan rate locked at 59.94kHz. See below...

Each time you save your settings and go back into the adjustment screen you will need to "recheck" the "Lock scan frequencies" button.
Connect your HDTV.

We have found it useful to not "tweak" our settings for the "Setup" display unless necessary. Get things to sync up, and be viewable on the Setup Display, then do your final position/size tweaks with the HDTV attached. Have the CRT monitor ready for your inevitable forays into "nonviewability".

Now is the time to be very careful and save settings very frequently. Very, very frequently. To save your settings you must click the "OK" button on the "Advanced timing profiles.." screen as well as the "Ok" button on the "Display Profiles" screen in Powerstrip. Since we don't want to say that over and over again, we will designate that process as "Ok-Ok".

Adjustments should be made very slowly. Try moving your screen horizontally by clicking the horizontal "Position" button twice, towards the side it is farthest away from. "Ok-Ok".

Note: if the screen freaks out, hit the "escape" (<Esc>) key on the keyboard to get back to the "display Profiles" screen. This is probably going to be your favorite key in the world when using this program. Try this again while watching the "front porch" and "Back porch" settings. Notice how they change?

Wow! When you move left or right, one porch gets bigger and the other smaller. When you move left, your horizontal front porch gets bigger and your horizontal front porch gets smaller. When you move up, your vertical front porch gets bigger, while your vertical back porch grows smaller. If you want to adjust your porches manually, keep this in mind, and carefully move your porches in this fashion. If you keep changing a front porch without adjusting the back porch, you will soon be using the <Esc> key!

Remember to be very careful not to let the start menu (Taskbar) disappear from the screen (too low) before saving. You should also be careful to make sure your maximized windows are not too large to fit the screen. Don't do this by maximizing the window! Use your mouse to investigate your screen. If it disappears from your screen in one direction, you're adjusted past the edge on that side. You should move your display towards the opposite side. If you save your settings before doing this, you may not be able to reach important things like the "X" (close button) or other important parts of some windows.

It is easiest to just use the buttons for making adjustments to your screens width and height. Use the directional arrows to move towards the direction the arrow is pointing in. The arrows pointed towards each other buttons will shrink the screen, arrows pointed away from one another buttons will enlarge the screen. Careful! Save often. When an arrow button is "grayed out" you cannot adjust this aspect further.

You will probably hit "the wall" at some point. You will have adjusted as far as you can go, and will have to live with the over-scan/under-scan for the displays resolution settings. You can always try a different resolution. If you are over scanned, try a slightly smaller number for the resolution for the aspect which is too large. Remember the divisible by 8 rule. Keep the aspect ratio close to 16/9. Make sure your scan rates are correct for your display and "lock" them while adjusting. Hopefully you won't need that CRT anymore after awhile.

Stuff to remember:

• "backspace" key - undo, cancels last adjustment.
• "ALT-R" key combination - resets display , continue.
• "escape" key - reset and close display.
• PowerStrip safe mode hot key - Ctrl+Alt+S

Uncheck "Positive" Polarity for both Horizontal and Vertical, if your transcoder is set for negative polarity sync and your HDTV "likes it".
*note* Changing polarity will generally freak out your HDTV display if it is attached, and you may need to connect your "setup" CRT for this procedure and possibly restart.

We would like to thank Ram Electronics Industries, Inc. for allowing us to reprint this informative article.

Powerstrip's official forum: http://pub28.ezboard.com/bentech

Excellent guide at Keohi HDTV: http://www.keohi.com/keohihdtv/experttips/markrehjon/htpc_superguide.html

Other forums with good stuff:
http://www.hometheaterforum.com
http://forums.theatertek.com/

The Official Entech PowerstripForum - Great in-depth information.
http://pub28.ezboard.com/bentech

Then there's TigerDave's Custom Game Resolutions Matrix:
http://www.tigerdave.com/custom_res.htm