Bizarre Win7 font behavior

[Rehevkor]

After getting a new display I tinkered with the Cleartype setting in Win7 to see if I could make text look better. Even after reverting all of my changes I get some very strange text behavior.

At seemingly random intervals, on screen text will gradually become bolder, then gradually fade back to normal. I can't find anything on google about this, but then I'm not really sure what to search for. Has anyone else heard of this? How do I fix it?

 

[Tawnos]

Are you connecting your flat screen via VGA instead of DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort?

 

[Rehevkor]

No, I'm using HDMI. Also my sig is out of date, I'm using a Panasonic Viera plasma now.

 

[evilsofa]

What is the TV's native resolution, and what resolution is the TV showing?

Kind of sounds like the TV is trying to correct what it shouldn't. Is there something in the options to turn off all image processing?

Also, when fiddling with text and Cleartype, it's critical for the TV/monitor to have the correct sharpness seting; use the lagom.nl Sharpness page to set it correctly.

 

[Rehevkor]

What is the TV's native resolution, and what resolution is the TV showing?

Kind of sounds like the TV is trying to correct what it shouldn't. Is there something in the options to turn off all image processing?

Also, when fiddling with text and Cleartype, it's critical for the TV/monitor to have the correct sharpness seting; use the lagom.nl Sharpness page to set it correctly.

The TV is 1080p and the video card is sending 1920x1080.

I really doubt it's the TV. This only affects plain text. Notepad, websites, etc are all affected, but text in images, Flash apps, and Adobe AIR apps is not affected.

 

[stop!theradio]

Your TV might have a noise reduction feature that creates the bold-like artifact with text. I'd shut noise reduction completely off. It might simply be harder to detect the effect in images or flash stuff than compared to text.

The only other thing I can think of is that there might be some clock/phase issues. My monitor is really picky about those settings so when I change them just a tad in one direction or the other, I'll get the same issue you are. Once it's at that "sweet spot" though, text and everything stays uniform and sharp. Check if you can play with those settings on your TV.