So recently I switched up from using a VGA cable to an HDMI cable on my HTPC and was greeted with a black border around the screen. No problem, just adjust the video scaling and be done with it yes? Unfortunately no. There are tons of posts by people looking for the solution to this problem and not all answers are effective. ATI certainly must know of this deficiency and with the number of people hooking laptops, htpc and business computers up to lcd tvs these days you would think it would be a priority to fix it.
I won’t rehash what has already been explained. AJ does a great job of explaining how to get most people up and running here - http://www.aoclarkejr.com/ati-catalyst-9-9-overcan-and-underscan-options.html
However this article is for the people who this does not work for or who do not want to install the ATI Catalyst Control Center. I happen to be both types. For me selecting “Configure” on my monitor just brought me back to the ATI Welcome Screen. Awesome.
Before we begin ensure that your TV is configured correctly. On my Samsung LCD TV I had to change the picture type to “Just Fit.” This caused my HDMI underscan problem to become slightly less worse, but did not fix the issue.
To fix your display:
- Write down the resolution and display frequency you are running at
- Start -> Run -> regedit
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video
- On my machine there were five subfolders in this key. Each of these subfolders contained keys named 0000 and 1111. Only one of these subfolders contained a ton of entries while the rest had only six entries. The subfolder with a ton of entries is the folder you want to be working with.
- Backup the 0000 and 1111 keys. Don’t just backup the whole video folder or subfolder.
- Select the 0000 folder and search for your tv’s resolution. In my case it was 1920×1080.
- There will be multiple entries found in the format Name ResolutionxFrequency. eg:
- DALR6 CRT1920x1080x0x59 - I believe this is your VGA connection
- DALR6 DFPI 21920x1080x0x59 - this was hdmi for me
- Edit the key that matches your resolution AND frequency – change everything to zeroes
- There is a corresponding key in the 0001 folder. Change that one also.
- Change your monitor resolution and then change it back to 1920×1080 or whatever you are using
- The underscan should be gone
I tried to figure out what these keys control, but failed to decipher what the binary representations were. I even wrote a little program to try and convert the key to hex/string/int/decimal/etc with no success. If anyone could provide feedback on this it would be good karma. Logical sense would say it should be a decimal like .01 or an integer like 1 to represent 1%.
I’ve had this post waiting in the wings for weeks and of course just as I am about to post all this crap ATI releases Catalyst 10.6 which appears to have fixed the problem where the welcome screen doesn’t appear. Ugh.
Tags: ati, hdmi, overscan, underscan, welcome screen
Wow! Thank you for your post! I still can’t believe I had to go in the registry to solve this problem and reboot my computer to finally see with my full 23 inches!!!
So, a big thank you to you sir, because all the forum that I read here and there where not working for me. The solution for my new Inspiron 570 with a Dell ST2310 monitor was to go in the ATI’s Catalyst Control Center and change the scaling options to 0% in the “Scaling Options” tab. I don’t even have a Scaling options tab!
No matter what version of CCC I installed, incl the latest, I could not get the scaling options to show with EAH4350 Card. Finally I did the registry edits and it works. Only took me 2 days of grief and fiddling, and needless to say this will be the last time I buy ATI, I’ve had nothing but grief with them for years. THanks very much for this, without this my only solution would have been to purchase a new nVidia card.
Worked in WinXP, ATI X1950, 1920×1080 via HDMI. Great, thanks a lot!
Thank you very much for this advice. My sister-in-law has been dealing with the black bars since has had the PC. I kept reading about the scaling option within CCC and was dismayed to find it unavailable.
Dell Inspiron 570 with Integrated Radeon 4200 graphics.
Awesome !! Thank you so much for this , my image is now completely fullscreen and very crisp and clear !
After buying a new HP 23in and an hour of frustration with ATI CCC, found your instructions and the registry fix worked like magic. I’m not an english major but have written a sonnet or two in my days
Thanks, Thomas!!!!
You are the man! God, after the setting was removed from the Vision Control Panel and all that good stuff I was pulling my hair out here. Maybe it has something to do with running passthrough on the receiver. Who knows. Either way, fixed thanks to your info.
Feel free to email me your if you want a tenner sent to ya via paypal for some beers, you deserve it.
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wow… worked… thanks for your help!
Thanks, I’m going to give this a try. I’ve got a Dell ST2010 Monitor and I don’t believe I have the scaling options in the Catalyst 11 setting either. I upgraded versions and the new program would not load and I had to do the complete unistall via the admin account and registry cleanup.
I really wish ATI would have created a better product that would have cleaned up it’s old pieces and not forced me to spend this much time searching for fixes to remove the underscan from my monitor connected via the HDMI Cable.
WoW. Thanks SO MUCH. This was an actual solution still almost 2 years later. I have an Inspiron 570 and this is all I needed to do. I was about to take it back. Thanks again, you’re a Best Buy Associate’s Life Saver, LOL!
Thanks a million! Worked like a charm
Wow finally! Thank you!
Brilliant! Just my 0000 key had non-zero values, my 0001 was all zeros. Worked like a charm. Thanks!
Awesome! Worked for Windows 8. CCC isn’t working right for win8 yet, at least not for me… but this worked perfect! Battled this for hours. Thanks!
Not sure if it will help in all cases , but it did the trick for me (without installing CCC nor looking into regedit):
1. Go to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Display\Screen Resolution
2. Click on advanced settings -> Advanced settings in Adapter tab
3. Go to Driver tab -> Update driver
4. Select ‘Browse my computer for driver software’, then ‘Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer’.
5. I selected Ati Radeon HD 5470 (as suggested on Dell’s site for my PC).
and that’s it! the new driver was installed and after a couple of seconds full screen was used.hope that helps.
Brilliant! Thank you so much for this solution, it’s the only one that worked for me. Can’t believe it takes a registry change to sort this out. Good find.
THANK YOU.
Latest install of AMD CCC crashed on my mother-in-law’s PC and will NOT install at all. Driver installed, but CCC did not and the TV was underscanning.
This fixed it.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.
BB