Connecting MacBook Pro to HDTV

I connected my MacBook Pro to my plasma TV via HDMI, and I was very surprised by the results and not in a good way. The resolution seemed very poor (I know it won't look like the Retina display, but this looked sub-CRT quality), and no matter what settings I used on the MacBook or the TV the very top and bottom of the screen were cut off -- I could see just a bit of the top of the dock, and could not see the menu bar at all). Let's not even talk about the washed out color.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong... it's a quality HDMI cable, fantastic TV (Panasonic Vierra 50" Plasma), I set the resolution on the MacBook to 1080 and the TV set to no zooming / cropping (although I did cycle through all of the settings to make sure).

Any ideas?