HD100/HD200 Overscan Poll

[Taddeusz]

Don't know if anyone is still paying attention to this but thought I'd chime in that I've discovered that my cheap Insignia TV really is 1:1 in 1920x1080 RGB. Downloaded the AVS HD calibration videos this morning and was running through them. One of the last screens shows amount of overscan and such. Which, BTW, shows that in YUV my TV has almost 5% overscan.

The same test pattern also has moire test blocks which show perfectly without any interference patterns when running in 1080p RGB but they do in 1080p YUV. So my HDTV apparently is in 1:1 mode while running in 1080p RGB but nowhere else.

[phelme]

I just bought an HD300 and am seeing this overscan problem which I did not have when using the SageTV client on a PC. The ATI software under Windows on the client would allow me to adjust the bounds of the image to fit the screen. I haven't (yet) found an equivalent option that works for the HD300. But I just got the thing so I'll search around here for any solutions.

It's pretty annoying as heads and text are noticeably cut-off at the top and bottom of the screen. If I shrink the aspect ratio below about 1.4 it will "pop" into an image where the entire content is visible, but of course it's all then very squished with black bars at the top and bottom.

Now the TV is an ancient Mitsubishi rear projection HDTV which doesn't allow adjustment except in service mode (and it only does 1080i... that's how old it is). I don't want to go in the service mode unless I have to because as anyone who was worked with CRT guns knows it's a pain in the a** to realign everything once one starts tweaking.

If I decide to keep the extender I'll probably have to retire the TV if I can't find a solution. Some would say it's time anyway.

[Taddeusz]

I'd say you're probably out of luck with that HDTV. I have a friend with one and I don't believe there's a way to disable overscan and the extenders don't have any way either other than for the menus. Video playback doesn't use the overscan settings. You would need to create custom AR settings to compensate.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by phelme

I just bought an HD300 and am seeing this overscan problem which I did not have when using the SageTV client on a PC. The ATI software under Windows on the client would allow me to adjust the bounds of the image to fit the screen.

Just to clarify things, you did have this problem with the PC, but the PC software/drivers had a workaround built in.

I haven't (yet) found an equivalent option that works for the HD300. But I just got the thing so I'll search around here for any solutions.

In detailed setup there are overscan settings which will make sure none of the UI is cut off, but there's no way to shrink the actual video.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by stanger89

In detailed setup there are overscan settings which will make sure none of the UI is cut off, but there's no way to shrink the actual video.

Aspect ratio controls would probably be able to do it, though I wouldn't want to unnecessarily scale my video in such a manner.

[stanger89]

From what I remember there isn't actually a way to force addition of black bars/padding through the AR controls, which would be required to shrink the video.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by stanger89

From what I remember there isn't actually a way to force addition of black bars/padding through the AR controls, which would be required to shrink the video.

Must be an extender limitation then. I know in SageTV/SageTVClient, setting either Horizontal Stretch or Vertical Stretch to <100% will indeed shrink the video, leaving the extra space as a black field.

[phelme]

I posted this on another thread but I'll repeat it here. For my old Mitsubishi CRT HDTV, I figured out a way to mostly get around my overscan problem with the HD300. There are two steps, first, I shrunk the aspect ratio to just below 1.4, which "popped" the entire video into a squeezed letterbox image. Then I made the custom AR below, which stretched everything onto the screen properly.

advanced_aspect_ratio_extra_modes=Source Mitsu|blackstrip\=1786,4096|cutstrip\=0,0|nonlinearmode\=0,0|scalingmode\=LetterBox|source\=2048,2018,4096,4096,FrontEdgeToCenter,FrontEdgeToCenter,Relative,Relative,Relative,Relative

(the above is placed in the client properties file for the particular extender)

The rub is, the ratio for the SageTV UI is now all skewed and text is stretched and flattened a bit. You can either live with it or bring in ends of the SageTV UI in Display Settings->Multimedia->Overscan Settings to compensate.

Edit: Turns out this doesn't work for everything. 4:3 material ends up stretched horizontally no matter what I do.