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HDMI not full screen


Guest stoolzo

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Guest stoolzo

Hi, anyone else tried playing a movie through the HDMI?, black bars at each side suggest to me it isnt outputting correctly. My TV clocks it as 1080p so it must be the HUDL.

 

I had seen on a few forums where there was a bug with 4.2 where you would get black bars veritcal it each side with HDMI out but I cant find any more info about this.

 

Otherwise, for the money this is a cracking little tablet, really happy with it (bought it for my mum for XMAS) but not being able to get full screen in movies is a real ding in its armour for me.

 

!!! note no amount of fiddling on the TV or HUDL settings will resolve this as a part of the screen is actually missing, its not a zoom or position issue.

 

Any fixes?

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Works fine for me. The only thing that doesn't work in terms of screen size is BT sport which takes IP the left hand 3/4s of the screen. Suspect this is an app issue caused by hudl resolution....

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Guest stoolzo

Are you sure about this, you are not getting an black vertical lines on the sides of your TV in both screen mirror mode and playing a movie? - what output resolution are you chosing, what type of TV do you have?

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Guest stuben32

really, no side bars at all, a wide screen movie plays in full screen and the picture touches the edge at both left and right hand side?

Have you checked in the HDMI menu in settings?  I don't have a telly with HDMI to test

 

Oops just re-read the original post - never mind

Edited by stuben32
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Guest Droibles

Mine is doing the same on my Hitachi TV. Can't get it to full the screen no matter what settings I use. It fills top to bottom, but not full width.

Also even though I set the Hudl screen timeout to 10 seconds the screen only dims after 10 seconds and doesn't turn off completely. So watching through HDMI without charger plugged in is a double whammy of battery drain for the Hudl. Anyone else seeing this?

:( shame because otherwise it's a great little tablet.

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Guest stoolzo

Mine is doing the same on my Hitachi TV. Can't get it to full the screen no matter what settings I use. It fills top to bottom, but not full width.

Also even though I set the Hudl screen timeout to 10 seconds the screen only dims after 10 seconds and doesn't turn off completely. So watching through HDMI without charger plugged in is a double whammy of battery drain for the Hudl. Anyone else seeing this?

:( shame because otherwise it's a great little tablet.

Hi, are you using the tesco HDMI or did you buy a cheapo like me, what firmware version are you on?. Those that have this working, can you report where you got your HDMI cable from, which version of firmware you are on and you HDMI settings in android, cheers.

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Guest Droibles

Hi, are you using the tesco HDMI or did you buy a cheapo like me, what firmware version are you on?. Those that have this working, can you report where you got your HDMI cable from, which version of firmware you are on and you HDMI settings in android, cheers.

I'm using the non-cheapo "official" Tesco HDMI cable. I've tried selecting all of the resolutions/refresh rates in the HDMI settings, but still get the same problem. Android/Hudl build is the latest JDQ39.20131016.200812.

I'm less upset by the black bars as I am by the Hudl screen not turning off during HDMI payback.

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Guest stoolzo

I cant see this being an issue with our TV's, i'm starting to think those that say its working ok are somehow mistaken in some way or they have an extra option on their TV which zooms the picture, however this would mean that the top notification bar would be missing when they close the movie and went back to the android home screen.

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Guest stoolzo

i logged a call with tesco support, quite suprised I got a good techy answer even if it isnt quite what we are after:  

 

Thank you for your mail regarding the display on your TV screen.

The resolution of the Hudl is 1440 x 900 pixels, and your TV screen is 1920 x 1080 pixels. These two displays have different aspect ratios, meaning that the ratio between the width and the height of these two images are not the same size.

The output from the Hudl will be stretched until it meets the limiting dimension of the external display. When you increase the height of the image from the Hudl until it is 1080 pixels high, to keep the same aspect ratio of the image, the width of the image only become 1728 pixels wide. This results in a difference of 192 pixels which is then split between the two sides of the image that will create 2 black areas of 96 pixels wide each.

If the image was stretched from 1440 x 900 directly to 1920 x 1080, it would result in the image looking as though it had been pulled width ways to fill the screen and the image would look incorrect.

If there is anything else I can help you with, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards

Iain

Technical Advisor
Tesco Tech Support

 

I have replied back suggesting that the video player software is supposed to output a full 1080p image irrespective of the resolution of the tablet screen which is what my galaxy S3 and Glaaxy note 10.1 does. ( i bought the HUDL for my mum for xmas)

 

This also suggest that those who claim to have this working properly  must be zooming the image somehow and are not watching the movie in the correct aspect ratio to get it to  fit the screen. I can drop mine to 740x480 and have it looking about right but the image is low res and fugly.

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Guest paultr2

tesco replied, the issue has been escalated to their second line, good service so far from them.

Yes, very good service from Tesco. They must have put considerable resources into their support team when you consider that apart from 'advanced' technical queries like yours they must have loads of people ringing in with much more basic questions.

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Guest Justice™

I may have a "dirty" solution to your issue of full screen HDMI, I'm not sure if root is needed, but terminal emulator is a must. I'd suggest doing this before connecting to HDMI.

The command is:

am display-size 1920x1080

You can also change display density with:

am display-density 240

To reset both of these variables, the commands are simply:

am display-size reset

And

am display-density reset

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Guest Droibles

I may have a "dirty" solution to your issue of full screen HDMI, I'm not sure if root is needed, but terminal emulator is a must. I'd suggest doing this before connecting to HDMI.

 

 

 

I can confirm that this needs root. Tried this 'am' command on my non-rooted Hudl and it errors due to insufficient permissions.

 

So far I've had no reason to root my Hudl... looks like I just found one... :blink:

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Guest Droibles

I can confirm that this needs root. Tried this 'am' command on my non-rooted Hudl and it errors due to insufficient permissions.

 

So far I've had no reason to root my Hudl... looks like I just found one... :blink:

 

UPDATE: Ooops. Hadn't tapped home after this command 'failed'. When I did, the display changed to 1920x1080. Then issued the 'am display-size reset' and it went back fine, but again, only after tapping home. 

 

So it does seem to work without root.

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Guest Droibles

The App, NOMone Resolution Changer, handles these shell commands.

 

Thanks, was looking for an app and found a few, but most immediately need root and won't run. It appears that the NoMone Resolution Changer app also needs root, but doesn't complain - or error - when you don't have it. It doesn't work though without root.

 

If you use the previous 'am' commands from a local terminal, the setting at least applies even though it doesn't stay persistent after a reboot. It'd be much more useful if the app applied the setting whether you were root or not.

 

I've set my Hudl to 1920x1080 and 288 density (commands below) from local terminal session fine.

 

Used ConnectBot to connect to the local session and executed the commands.

 

Notes:

 

- even though you get an error when you issue the command it has issued it and you will only see the results once you tap Home. Issue both commands before tapping Home.

 

- I found that the display command needs to be 1080x1920 not 1920x1080 to get it to display correctly

 

- Using 240 for density messes up the launcher display because 240 DPI with 1920x1080 on a 6 inch x 3.75 inch physical display is not the correct DPI. I tried both 320 (1920 pixels / 6 inches) and 288 (1080 / 3.75 inches). 288 worked best and the lanucher/icons kept their layout.

1920x1080 is not an ideal resolution on the Hudl itself and will always produce black bars are the top/bottom of the Hudl display. An aspect ratio of 1920/1080 is 1.7, aspect ratio on Hudl display/resolution (6"/3.75" and 1440/900)  is 1.6.   If you want it to fill the Hudl display then you would use 1200x1920 (or 1920 / 1.6) - not sure how this would look on a TV though.

 

- Once you do this the launcher gets a bit quirky and the top left/right swipe-down menus don't swipe down very easily and you need to position your finger carefully.

 

- Also, if you use ConnectBot to issue the commands, I noticed, once you're in 1080 mode it's display doesn't quite work so resetting back to default means typing the commands blind because the cursor messes up - but it does work as long as you're careful typing them in.

 

Commands to set 1920x1080 screen resolution and 288 DPI

 

am display-size 1080x1920

 

am display-density 288

 

 

Commands to reset (same as Justice's original post)

 

 

am display-size reset

 

am display-density reset

 

 

Thanks to Justice for a very useful tip! I've never used 'am' (now 'wm' in Android 4.4) before, but this is really useful.

 

Will test with the TV tonight!!! :)

Edited by Droibles
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Guest stoolzo

hi, just so we are clear here, i'm not trying to get the launcher to show in full screen, just movies. I'm pretty sure that when playing a movie through the video player it should default to a standard TV aspect ratio but it doesn't, it keeps the aspect ratio of the main home screen, this appears to be the problem.

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Guest Droibles

hi, just so we are clear here, i'm not trying to get the launcher to show in full screen, just movies. I'm pretty sure that when playing a movie through the video player it should default to a standard TV aspect ratio but it doesn't, it keeps the aspect ratio of the main home screen, this appears to be the problem.

Sorry, I am clear, it's just I was initially only messing around with my Hudl not connected to the TV, so could only comment on the launcher.

 

I've now had a chance for some extensive testing on my TV and it looks like what you posted about a general problem being true to some degree. No matter what settings I set, the Hudl would only ever fill the TV screen vertically and appeared to always be restricted to the max Hudl resolution horizontally (1440 pixels) - so black bars down left/right.

 

Even so I am more annoyed that my Hudl screen doesn't fully turn off after the 10 second timeout and only dims slightly. I can put up with the TV screen not being filled, but having the battery hammered by HDMI use and the Hudl screen still being on is less than useful!

 

Can anyone confirm if, while connected to HDMI, their Hudl screen fully turns off and goes black or does it just dim?

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Guest Droibles

I don't know if it's the correct ratios, but I use VLC and select the full screen options which results in no black bars top or bottom.

What about black bars down the left/right of the TV? No matter what I use I can't get rid of these. It always fills top to bottom though.

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Guest greyrider

I don't know if it's the correct ratios, but I use VLC and select the full screen options which results in no black bars top or bottom.

 

Tap once to adjust vertical, tap again to adjust horizontal - or vice versa, no black bars top or bottom. Mine's on old 42" LCD TV, I don't adjust anything either on the Hudl or the TV, just connect via HDMI (very cheap one from Amazon), launch VLC, choose file to play, tap, tap, adjust volume to suit and sit back and watch the thing. I can't recall if  the tablet blanks out or not and I'm not at home to try it.

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