Joys of using a tv as a monitor

So I've got this 24 inch tv with HDMI that I'm using as a monitor. Mostly it looks pretty good, but there are a couple of things that are irritating. One is that it wants to overscan HDMI at 1280x720p so I can't see the full screen. I'm using one of those Displaylink USB to HDMI adapters, which after some searching has the option to shrink the available display down so that it fits on the monitor.

It doesn't move in increments smaller than 64 pixels though, so I'm using a resolution of 1216x656 and everything is visible with a small black border around it all.

The displaylink goes up to 1680x1050 but it's easier to read at the lower resolution. Interestingly, the higher resolutions aren't zoomed at all by the TV, just the one I want to use, 1280x720p.

Also the displaylink has kind of a weird "interlacing" effect when scrolling. I think it's saving up on the amount of data it's sending over the USB bus.

Which brings me to my next feature, cleartype. The text has a weird red/blue fringing not too unlike the old apple II graphical text. It's most noticeable when on a completely white or black background.

And then the most annoying thing is that the TV doesn't want to go into standby upon losing the signal. A regular monitor wants to go into powersave immediately, but TV's do not, happily telling you for the next 10 minutes that there is no signal. Then it will power off but won't come back on when you bring the computer out of standby, making you find the remote control so you can turn the TV back on.


Some more things about this tv. I put another system on the VGA input, and the VGA will only go up to 1440x900 even though the TV is full hd. If I use the HDMI input on this TV with the same computer, I can get 1920x1080 and it looks great. It identifies itself as a "Mars-Tech 26 inch" in ubuntu even though the brand is Haier. If you don't use the full hd and use the "stretch" aspect at 1440x900 it looks terrible with ugly horizontal blurry scaling and there's no ability to sharpen up the image. The menu option for sharpness is greyed out.