Philips 50PFL8956D/78 doesn't natively support its native resolution

[Julioau]

Hello! I don't know which "forum" I should post this in, so I am posting here, do tell if there's a better place to put it!

Either way, thank you for your time in advance!

My setup

I own an AMD RX 6600.
and
I got this Philips 50PFL8956D/78 as a hand-me-down. It boasts a 50", 2560x1080@60 panel, however none of the inputs support that resolution out of the box. (see manual image below)


So I naively tried creating a custom 2560x1080 resolution with CVT-RB timings. That results in this:

It just displays the first 1920x1080 pixels and completely ignores the latter 640x1080

When I had an Nvidia GPU, I used a scaling hack. Basically: render in 2560x1080, but stretch that into 1920x1080 in the GPU. Then, stretch it back using the TV scaling settings, resulting in this:

It's not perfect, but works okay.

I cannot find a way to do the same on the AMD software. To start things off, VSR is enabled and so is GPU scaling in full panel mode, yet no matter what I do achieves my goal of stretching 2560x1080 into 1920x1080. I don't know anything about timings and stuff, but I am extremely interested in learning. If you have any resources, do tell!

My first attempt using AMDs software. I basicaly just used 2560x1080 timings, but asked for a 1920x1080 resolution, pretty sure that is not the way to do it, but IDK what I am doing :/

The idea was, since I want an active signal of 1920x1080, but a desktop resolution of 2560x1080, I should kinda mix and match them... regardless of how naive that was, the result was AMD telling me "The custom resolution settings are not compatible with this display. Reconfigure your settings and try again.".

Anyways-- Everyone I talked to about this said I should come here and try ToastyX's software out. I read about it in these forums, watched videos about it and then tried using it on my own, but I still couldn't manage it.

• I tried creating a custom 1920x1080 resolution using CRU but with 2560x1080 timings (I still don't know if that was silly of me, I literally don't know enough to know if that was a bad attempt :/)
  
  This resulted in the same thing as creating a 2560x1080 resolution on AMDs software, the Display just renders the first 16:9 portion of the image.
• I also tried using SRE and enabling the 2560x1080 option that was already greyed out, whist ensuring VSR was enabled --though I believe that didn't work because the display is reporting --through its EDID, that the native resolution is 1920x1080 and you warned that resolutions above native only work if they're the same aspect ratio as the custom one "Resolutions greater than the monitor's native resolution will only be available if Virtual Super Resolution (VSR) is enabled and the aspect ratio matches the native resolution.".
  
  Also didn't work :/
  

So here I am. I've been trying to fix this for so long and I am tired of seeing black bars or running at 1920x810@60 with CVT-RB timings.

I am also scared to overwrite its EDID-- and I don't know if that would be necessary. I would already be happy with my hack working if it meant less risk of breaking this ancient TV. It's literally 15 years old and working just as it did out of the box. However, if worse comes to that, I might consider taking that route and documenting the process for other possible owners.

Here goes the EDID of the TV:

Code:

00 FF FF FF FF FF FF 00 41 0C 00 00 01 01 01 01
2F 14 01 03 80 5C 34 78 0A E6 92 A3 54 4A 99 26
0F 4A 4C 21 08 00 8B C0 81 80 A9 40 01 01 01 01
01 01 01 01 01 01 02 3A 80 18 71 38 2D 40 58 2C
45 00 00 D0 52 00 00 1E 02 3A 80 D0 72 38 2D 40
10 2C 45 80 00 D0 52 00 00 1E 00 00 00 FC 00 50
68 69 6C 69 70 73 20 46 54 56 0A 20 00 00 00 FD
00 30 3E 0F 46 11 00 0A 20 20 20 20 20 20 01 D5
02 03 37 F1 52 10 1F 20 22 21 05 14 04 13 12 03
11 02 16 07 15 06 01 26 09 1F 07 15 07 50 83 01
00 00 70 03 0C 00 10 00 38 2D A0 2E 2E D0 04 01
40 01 FF E3 05 03 01 01 1D 80 3E 73 38 2D 40 7E
2C 45 80 00 D0 52 00 00 1E 01 1D 80 D0 72 1C 16
20 10 2C 25 80 00 D0 52 00 00 9E 01 1D 00 BC 52
D0 1E 20 B8 28 55 40 00 D0 52 00 00 1E 01 1D 80
18 71 1C 16 20 58 2C 25 00 00 D0 52 00 00 9E E1

I don't know if it's gonna be useful, but I tried researching a little bit about EDIDs before coming here and according to this website, there are some warnings and failures on this data?

Is there anything that can be done to displaying a native 2560x1080 image on this display or at least configuring the hacky way described 2560x1080 desktop -> 1920x1080 signal?

[ToastyX]

(02-21-2025 08:20 PM)Julioau Wrote:  The idea was, since I want an active signal of 1920x1080, but a desktop resolution of 2560x1080, I should kinda mix and match them... regardless of how naive that was, the result was AMD telling me "The custom resolution settings are not compatible with this display. Reconfigure your settings and try again.".

You have the right idea, but the resolution is the desktop resolution and the timing display is the active resolution, so they should be swapped. The problem is AMD's driver might not allow that, and there is no other way to do what you want. CRU does not deal with scaling, so it can't do what you want. The EDID only deals with active resolutions. SRE won't work for this purpose either since it's a higher resolution and the aspect ratios don't match.

[Julioau]

(02-23-2025 05:33 AM)ToastyX Wrote:  You have the right idea, but the resolution is the desktop resolution and the timing display is the active resolution, so they should be swapped. The problem is AMD's driver might not allow that, and there is no other way to do what you want. CRU does not deal with scaling, so it can't do what you want. The EDID only deals with active resolutions. SRE won't work for this purpose either since it's a higher resolution and the aspect ratios don't match.

Yeah, just tried it and got the same message :/ Such a shame. I wish this wasn't a limitation, but I understand that it's not exactly a common use case. Though, it leaves me wondering sometimes. It feels like that message is wrong, it's almost as if it's a GPU/driver limitation. I have created multiple custom resolutions that don't work on my display, yet AMD doesn't give me that error. What if some of the custom resolutions I'm trying to create do work, but AMD just doesn't let me try them? :/

Regardless, thank you so much for that insight. Do you reckon if I connect my other 4K TV it'll let me create something like this:

so that I can at least verify that it doesn't work?

Also, it just occured to me, if I somehow ovewrote the EDID (after a very careful backup) so that the "Native" resolution is now higher than the one I want to use AND the right aspect ratio, could SRE work for my use case?

[ToastyX]

(02-23-2025 02:42 PM)Julioau Wrote:  Yeah, just tried it and got the same message :/ Such a shame. I wish this wasn't a limitation, but I understand that it's not exactly a common use case. Though, it leaves me wondering sometimes. It feels like that message is wrong, it's almost as if it's a GPU/driver limitation. I have created multiple custom resolutions that don't work on my display, yet AMD doesn't give me that error. What if some of the custom resolutions I'm trying to create do work, but AMD just doesn't let me try them? :/

It is a driver limitation. GPU-downscaled resolutions should be possible like with NVIDIA, but AMD does not allow it for some reason.

(02-23-2025 02:42 PM)Julioau Wrote:  Regardless, thank you so much for that insight. Do you reckon if I connect my other 4K TV it'll let me create something like this:
https://i.imgur.com/jSKducG.png
so that I can at least verify that it doesn't work?

The driver probably will not allow that, and custom resolutions for the TV would not affect other displays.

(02-23-2025 02:42 PM)Julioau Wrote:  Also, it just occured to me, if I somehow ovewrote the EDID (after a very careful backup) so that the "Native" resolution is now higher than the one I want to use AND the right aspect ratio, could SRE work for my use case?

No because it would not scale to the correct resolution.