I'm testing/configuring a build with a 4th-gen i3 with HD 4400 graphics, Windows 7 x64, an Asus MiniITX board, 256gb SSD, and face-melting sub-10s boot time. God, this machine is absolutely amazing. Except for one major flaw.
I have an older Sony Grand WEGA 60" 1080i HDTV. Yes, 1080i - so motion is a little sluggish compared to a modern 1080p LCD, but it fills my living room nicely with amazing sound and presence. I've repaired it over the years and have no intention of upgrading due to this issue since this is only a test PC to be installed elsewhere (with a new display that'll work fine). Other GPUs have had no issues working with this TV's need to apply underscanning.
The TV has one option in the menus for over/underscan, and it offers three options: "-1", "0", and "+1". Just "1". When I set it to "-1", which I always leave it at, the edges are still cut off everything I play on it. Significantly.
When a computer throws the native resolution (1920x1080, 30hz interlaced) at it, the edges are so significantly cut off the screen that I can't access the left-most icons of the desktop, the Start button is off the screen, and the title bar of windows are cut off - I have to use Alt+F4 to close windows since I can't see "X" to click it. This makes the computer nearly unusable with their default settings. Using my TV absolutely requires a functional underscan option.
AMD and nVidia both have underscan options that, with some amount of tweaking, will let me use 1080i resolution with the edges visible - software underscanning. It usually results in a custom resolution being created (1890-by-something-or-other), and in software, that creates black borders around the edges that are cropped off the physical screen. On the screen, the image is perfect and the system is completely usable.
However, Intel's latest drivers (5/14/2014), bent every which way with PowerStrip and custom resolutions, will not work. Creating a custom resolution - which is an absolute NIGHTMARE in the new control panel (more on that later) - just results in a black or corrupted display and I have to blindly hit "Esc" to revert it. There is no overscan or scaling option. I literally cannot use my PC on my HDTV due to the limited functionality of the Intel control panel.
Which leads me to the Intel control panel programming issues. This new chip seems to use a new style of control panel, completely different from the black/blue control panel on Intel chipsets I've seen in the past. The "Custom Resolutions" page, though, is the crown jewel (turd?) of buggy programming, though. I only use the "Basic" page due to not fully understanding low-level timing parameters. I enter "1920" width, "1080" height, "30" refresh, interlacing Enabled, change color depth to 32-bit (which should NOT default to "8-bit"... what's up with that? Why is this even an option in 2014?), and slide underscan over to "20%". It'll show the correct settings in the summary at the bottom, but when I click "Add" and confirm it, an invalid parameter of "30p" is added to the resolution list.
That's one of the little issues, but definitely a bug, compared to a massive functional failure in the Custom Resolutions tool. If any option at all is denied (at seemingly random) by the driver, it gives me a failure message - "An invalid value has been entered". OK, I can understand that and work with it. But when I hit "OK", it erases all the values from the page and makes me re-enter *everything* in order to try again. It leaves "Interlaced" selected, but even if I switch it back and forth, it seems to ignore the option and set "p" mode even if the confirmation at the bottom of the page says "i", giving me an unusable custom resolution entry. Most combinations in the Custom Resolutions panel will result in "an invalid value has been entered", so this is a MASSIVE show-stopper, having to enter the values again each time I run into something it deems "invalid".
Custom resolutions and overscan have been a problem with Intel drivers for over a decade now. Why are we still fighting with this? I actually thought Intel started taking graphics seriously, and held a lot of respect for the new CPUs/GPUs. Dealing with this issue today just knocked my respect down several pegs.