Although image compression is responsible for a slight decrease in image clarity, image quality is defined by your computer and TV resolution, computer and network performance, and display calibration. This article will focus on display calibration. The default image settings on most TVs and projectors today are adjusted for the best appearance when watching satellite TV. These settings aren't always perfect and often get adjusted incorrectly, which may distort the image's sharpness and colors when showing a computer screen on a TV or projector.
To get the best picture, we recommend going through the key facts and trying some of the configurations mentioned below:
Key Facts
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The image quality depends on the screen's calibration.
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Overscan causes the picture to be cropped on all edges.
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The image shown on the TV is the resolution of your computer screen scaled to your TV screen's resolution.
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The aspect ratio of TVs and projectors is usually 16:9, but some computers use 16:10. A mismatch in aspect ratio between the device sharing a screen and the Airtame screen will result in black bars shown on the side of the stream.
Display Calibration
Let's start with opening an Excel-style spreadsheet. You can refer to its different grey scales in the rows, columns, and the menu bar as guidelines for adjusting the screen settings. This will illustrate if the picture has poor quality and the wrong colors.
Solution:
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Find the best-looking standard mode (can be named Natural) or reset all adjustments.
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Reduce contrast until all the lines in the spreadsheet are visible (often around 70-80% of the max value).
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Reduce sharpen until the text looks good and is easy to read (often 0-20% of maximum).
A setting called Black levels in advanced settings can be useful for getting the light grey tones to look good. Disabling 100 Hz and other image processing settings will remove latency caused by the TV. This will make it feel more responsive. The downside will be that when playing video, it can look less fluent because the TV does not process extra frames.
Disable Overscan
Many TVs and Projectors still use a setting called "Overscan" for standardizing a picture size sent from satellite TV, and this may be enabled by default.
When overscan is on, the picture looks cropped, where the edges seem to continue past the screen's boundaries.
Overscan can be solved by:
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Start a stream.
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Open your TV's screen settings.
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Look for Screen Size, Screen Adjustments, Aspect Ratio or Overscan.
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Cycle through the various options until the image fits the screen correctly. Usually, the correct option is Native, Full or Unscaled.
If the TV has a PC mode this often disables overscan and adjusts the image settings for the optimal quality when receiving a digital signal from a PC. It also disables image processing which will lower the latency when streaming.
Resolution
The image resolution shown on the TV is the resolution of your computer screen scaled to the resolution of your TV screen. This means that if your computer has a 720p monitor, the picture streamed to your TV will also be 720p even though the TV is 1080p.
The Airtame deviceS does not use hotplug events and will show a resolution that was pre-selected or that was used during the first boot. To force a new resolution you will have to reboot Airtame or select the resolution manually.
Filling the whole screen
Modern TV screens use a 16:9 aspect ratio, however, some modern computers (ex. Macbooks & Microsoft Surface devices) use a 16:10 aspect ratio. When an Airtame Screen with 16:9 shows a 16:10 ratio, it must scale the image to fit the screen without distorting it. The result is black bars on either side of the image. If you would like to stream your picture without seeing black bars, you'll need to change the resolution of your computer screen to one of these 16:9 resolutions:
- 3840 x 2160
- 2560 x 1440
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1920 x 1080
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1280 x 720