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[cncb]

I brought this up before.  The full-screen OSD is cut off by the overscan of my tv.  It needs to respect the overscan settings for Theater View to be usable for me.  Thanks.

[benn600]

This is a must.  One of my TVs does overscan, unfortunately, and it is annoying when the OSD goes off screen.  Good request!

[Matt]

It might make more sense to allow an overscan setting for "Display View" when it's maximized so it wouldn't fill the whole monitor.  Otherwise you'll still have the borders of display view getting cropped when you move the mouse.

Thoughts?

[cncb]

Either way is fine with me since I only use Display View from Theater View so I just use the remote and don't see the borders.  However, I wouldn't want the Display View overscan setting to affect the actual video (i.e. the video would still fill the whole monitor and be subjected to the overscan of my tv).

[Matt]

Either way is fine with me since I only use Display View from Theater View so I just use the remote and don't see the borders.  However, I wouldn't want the Display View overscan setting to affect the actual video (i.e. the video would still fill the whole monitor and be subjected to the overscan of my tv).

But as it stands, you won't see the edges of the video.  Isn't that a problem too?

By applying overscan to the entire Display View, it'd fix that problem as well.

[cncb]

But as it stands, you won't see the edges of the video.  Isn't that a problem too?

Well, not for me.  As far as I know video is produced expecting some amount of overscan to be applied.  If not, I'm not sure why it would exist (I'm no expert here)?  For example, often when I watch recorded ATSC on my PC monitor (where there is no overscan) I see a flickering white line at top edge of the video which I don't see when I watch it on my tv as intended.

[jmone]

Well, not for me.  As far as I know video is produced expecting some amount of overscan to be applied.  If not, I'm not sure why it would exist (I'm no expert here)?  For example, often when I watch recorded ATSC on my PC monitor (where there is no overscan) I see a flickering white line at top edge of the video which I don't see when I watch it on my tv as intended.

Correct - Overscan was desirable as it "hid" the usually rought right and bottom edge.  However I like the idea of Matt's were if we have an "adjustable" Overscan setting that applied to everything then you could make it so it was "just" overscanning.  As a point this is how your graphic drivers "should" work but in my expereince they just don't......

Thanks
Nahtan

[glynor]

The main reason for overscan is that in the old days, on CRT displays, the edges of the tube-projected image was heavily distorted (it still is, but considerably less so with modern technology).  So, the TV manufacturers covered this part of the image up with a "bezel", now made of plastic.

Later on, as broadcasting evolved, this unused portion of the video stream became used for embedding "extra data" in the image, which the TV could extract from the video stream, decode, and use for other purposes such as sync and closed captioning (that's those white lines).  Standard NTSC/ATSC broadcast has a total of 525 lines, but only 486 of these are considered "visible".  The actual amount of overscan varies considerably from display to display, so 90% of those 486 lines are considered "action safe" (meaning you can assume the viewer can see them), and only 80% are considered "Title Safe" (meaning they'll be non-distorted and centered enough that it's safe to use them for text).

Current flat panel displays also have a portion of the image overscanned because of the backlight in the displays.  The florescent tube backlights are not perfectly diffused behind the LCD/plasma panel, which results in an image that gets progressively dimmer as you approach the edges of the panel.  This brightness distortion is VERY apparent right at the edges of the display (and gets worse over time as the backlight ages), so manufacturers cover the edges of the panel up with a plastic bezel.  Newer OLED and LED-backlit displays won't suffer from this issue (at least anywhere near as much) but they are still absent or rare in the marketplace thus far.

[cncb]

Thanks, that was great information.  One correction, though, plasmas (including mine) don't have a backlight so I assume the overscan is still there for the extra data they are embedding.

[benn600]

If each pixel has its own light source then it should be very even.  While there is some variation, I have a very tough time noticing it on my LCDs.  When you have an image on the screen, it is even more difficult.  With solid black it's much easier.

I'm looking forward to seeing LED backlit displays.  I think they use less power and have a much more accurate and wide color gamut.

[Matt]

I should add that MC has a "Crop Edges" option for TV and Video playback for cropping away overscan garbage in the source.  The MPEG stream from HDTV often needs this, even though it's a digital bitstream.

[benn600]

Not to be off topic but regarding theater view, any ideas if some more progress can be made on the text/image sizing ratio?  I started a thread or two but don't recall any information.  We were hoping for smaller text-to-thumbnail sizes.