Bad HDMI-out quality on laptop.

[darrellacoustic]

I'm having a ton of trouble trying to get a "clear" picture output to a 32" 1080p LG TV from my ASUS ROG Laptop. The picture scales perfect, but the picture is more like an SD quality than HD. Regardless of what quality of video I play, it still looks grainy and blurry.

The card (GTX 860M) should be more than capable of at least playing HD videos on this size of monitor. My first thought was that the onboard Intel HD graphics chip was the one actually outputting video, but I've made sure to select the 860m as the default in every setting I could find.
I also tried disabling the onboard graphics, which doesn't seem to do anything, until I try to go to my nvidia settings which then gives me the "NVIDIA settings unavailable/ not using nvidia card etc etc".

The default card is definitely the 860, because any game I boot up runs beautifully on high settings. I haven't tried running a game through hdmi though, so may try that next.

My next thought was that I was using the wrong out port. My laptop has both an HDMI, and a mini display port. So, I tried running from a mini display-to-hdmi adapter, but got the same image quality on the screen as before.

I'm not sure where to go from here. My only two ideas left, are to try running a game on the tv, to see if the 860 really is pushing the video, and to try a different hdmi cable. Kinda avoiding this one because the only other hdmi cable that isn't in storage is hooked to my desktop, which would be a pain to unhook from my flat screen setup, but if it comes to that I will.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[larkspur]

When you connect the TV, did you make sure to check the laptop's display settings to see if the TV is configured at 1920x1080? It sounds like it is set to a lower resolution.

 

[darrellacoustic]

When you connect the TV, did you make sure to check the laptop's display settings to see if the TV is configured at 1920x1080? It sounds like it is set to a lower resolution.

Yeah, that's what it's set at. Interestingly enough, I just realized when playing a game, picture quality is great. It's just everything else that isn't. I went into nvidia settings and made sure the 860 was set as the global display adapter, but weirdly when I went into the program settings, chrome was still set to use the integrated graphics. I changed it and watched some 1080p youtbe vids, and I really don't see a difference. Maybe a restart will change it.

 

[darrellacoustic]

New development. I went into my display settings from the desktop, and clicked on my diplay. From there I clicked advanced, and clicked "display adapter properties". There it showed the Intel HD chip as the adapter. So, I disabled it in the control panel and waited for the the screen to reset. Now it shows "Microsoft Basic Display Adapter" as the adapter. Why isn't the 860 being shown as the adapter? How do I correct this?

 

[larkspur]

If you haven't already you might try updating both the igpu and the nvidia gpu drivers (re-enable the igpu before updating its drivers). I would think the igpu should play video just fine. My laptop is old and weak and I've run 1080p video on my 1080p TV just fine from it (using it's old-school VGA port). Have you tried disabling the iGPU in BIOS? Consider that it might not be an igpu vs 860m thing, I dunno though, your issue is pretty strange.

 

[darrellacoustic]

If you haven't already you might try updating both the igpu and the nvidia gpu drivers (re-enable the igpu before updating its drivers). I would think the igpu should play video just fine. My laptop is old and weak and I've run 1080p video on my 1080p TV just fine from it (using it's old-school VGA port). Have you tried disabling the iGPU in BIOS? Consider that it might not be an igpu vs 860m thing, I dunno though, your issue is pretty strange.

Yeah, I'm usually pretty good at solving these things, but this one has me stumped. It's also very hard to find any info on this problem anywhere else. I found a few threads with similar issues, but they end abruptly without solution.

Anyway, I'm downloading an older driver for the 860m right now, because it did work fine at one time. The problem started after upgrading to win 10 a few months back. Unfortunately, my BIOS has no option for that. The only graphic option I have at all is memory allocation or something, and it's only for the onboard card.

 

[larkspur]

Memory allocation would be for the igpu, make sure it has enough. I'm really not a laptop guy, but as you've seen many laptops these days will try and use the igpu when they can to save power. Just curious, did you end up doing a clean install of win 10 or did you do the OS upgrade conversion process?