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Thursday, December 18, 2008

Invalid format on HDTV on connecting Laptop HDMI port to HDTV HDMI port

I was at Shantanu's place recently.  He has bought a new HP laptop which has HDMI port.  Whenever he tried to connect his laptop's HDMI port to his Sony Bravia HDTV HDMI port, it gave the error: "Invalid Format".  We googled for this issue as we were sure it is a known issue.  However, we didn't get any answers.  On a hunch, we checked the display resolution setting in Display properties of his laptop.  It was set at 1280x1024.  Since his TV is 720p (1280x720), we reduced the resolution to 1280x720.  The "invalid format" error message went away promptly and we were able to see the laptop display on the TV.  Wikipedia has a list of TV resolutions which is good information:

Televisions are of the following resolutions:
SDTV: 480i (NTSC, 720×480 split into two 240-line fields)
SDTV: 576i (PAL, 720×576 split into two 288-line fields)
EDTV: 480p (NTSC, 720×480)
HDTV: 720p (1280×720)
HDTV: 1080i (1280×1080, 1440×1080, or 1920×1080 split into two 540-line fields)
HDTV: 1080p (1920*1080 progressive scan)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I also fixed this problem by making sure the refresh rate was set to 60hz

Anonymous said...

i can't believe you guys are the only one who have published about that error, thanks a lot

Anonymous said...

I tried doing those things and I still see the "invalid format" error. I used to be able to display my laptop on my TV at many different aspect ratios, but now I can't. My computer is a Lenovo Think Pad Edge

Ganesh N R said...

thank you.. it worked for me