old uk televisions, 50/60hz question...

Started by hippy dave, September 01, 2005, 10:29:03 AM

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hippy dave

i've fitted my (pal) saturn with a 50/60hz switch, i connect it via rgb scart. the question tho is actually related to the tv rather than the saturn...

i've recently hooked it up to an old toshiba tv, it displays fine but when switched to 60hz the display stays the same vertical size as it was at 50hz, with black borders above and below. it definitely is displaying a 60hz image (the games run appropriately faster) but the picture doesn't stretch out to fill the screen vertically as is the norm on most televisions.

i've actually experienced this before with one other oooold tv, might have been a hitachi, is no longer with us... this time it was an amiga - my cracked copy of dynablaster (aka bombmeran) had a boot util to let you switch between 50 and 60hz. on other tvs 60hz would go full screen, but on this one it wouldn't.

so... the question. has anyone else in the uk encountered a tv that displays a 60hz picture but not full-screen as you'd expect? and, i don't suppose there's anything i can do to the tv (knobs to twiddle... there's nothing external at least and nothing in the on-screen menus) to make it go full-screen for 60hz without affecting how it displays 50hz signals?
cheers.

phreak97

theres nothing you can do about it if you dont have a vertical size adjustment, and even then it probably wont go far enough. older tv's do that cos they arent designed to adjust the number of horizontal lines on the screen when the refresh rate changes, so the black is basically there no matter what you do. in fact with newer consoles which do both 50Hz and 60Hz full screen with no boarders, switching to 60Hz will actually MAKE boarders..

even though you cannot play full screen, in alot of cases it is still better to use 60Hz, as you are still gaining the extra 16.67% gameplay speed to correct the slowdown which is present in many games.

one more thing though, i think i used to have a vcr which would stretch out a 60Hz signal to full screen on a pal tv, while still running at 60Hz, but i may be wrong, it was a while ago.

hippy dave

sorry, forgot to say thanks for the reply :)
nobody likes bad news eh? ;)