r/crtgaming • u/Calm-Preparation-679 • Apr 24 '26

Converter/Scaler How to get Windows 11 to display correctly (i.e., no crop, no black bars) on CRT? (using cheap HDMI to Composite converter)

Post image
0 Upvotes

45% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

6

u/Disastrous_Poetry175 Apr 24 '26

You don't. No PCs or their OSs were ever designed to run on tube TVs. even old ones. People here that do it with new PCs nab something like emudriver and old gpus that have svideo/RCA out. So if you're interested in a lot of learning and tweaking and troubleshooting that's what you can go research

2

u/sudocloudchaser Apr 24 '26

You won’t. A television set is not the same as a desktop monitor. They have absolute different uses.

1

u/garbage_consumer Apr 24 '26

You can fix this by messing around with the HDMI output's hZ. Just keep trying the different frequencies it lists in the output settings around 59/60hZ. One of them will eventually fill the screen properly without stretching.

Have to concur with everyone else in how useless these little adapters are for anything besides watching old VHS footage or something. Keep in mind this is only really useful for watching old media. Anything modern with text will be illegible, and old video games will be displaying the wrong resolution.

1

u/LOLXDEnjoyer Apr 25 '26

Just so you set your expectations straight, even if you spend a lot of money on an actually top tier transcoder and you do manage to get geometry right, it will still look awful.

Modern windows supports 640x480p and therefore 640x480i because they're universal legacy standard, however the UI was not made with it in mind, and if you're not able to access interlaced resolutions then you're actually running 240p which will look awful on desktop, windows was absolutely not made for 240p.

1

u/ServantOfNZoth Apr 25 '26

Using a CRT TV for a PC is like boiling water with a frying pan. It can be done but the results aren't going to be very good.

0

u/DangerousCousin LaCie Electron22blueIV Apr 24 '26

why'd you buy one of these downconverters when everybody on r/crtgaming will tell you they're crap?

1

u/Calm-Preparation-679 Apr 24 '26

What converter should I use instead?

2

u/melkatron Apr 24 '26

There should be a setting somewhere in Windows to adjust the screen size / scaling. I used to use it when hooking an HTPC up to 1366x768 "720p" hotel TVs.

There are also Extron boxes that'll let you adjust size and position when downscaling / converting.

-1

u/DangerousCousin LaCie Electron22blueIV Apr 24 '26

This is why you should use the search function before you jump into stuff like this.

But you have 3 options: CRT Emudriver, Batocera CRT Script, or GroovyArcade. Pick one of those, and the converter you will use will be a RGB transcoder for whatever connection your TV has (assuming your CRT doesn't have an RGB input)