Meador Manor

Overscan

For years my Samsung TXN3071WHF HDTV has suffered from overscan.  Most cathode-ray-tube (CRT) sets make the image too large to fit on the screen so that the edges are cut off.  Many newer LCD and plasma televisions can disable overscan, but it is common on older CRTs.  Cathode ray tube images tend to “bloom” or expand when bright images are displayed, and overscan makes this less noticeable.

Yes, I still use a CRT.  While it is a high-definition set with 800 lines of resolution, it lacks HDMI ports and other modern amenities.  Since it is only a 30″ set, I truly don’t need more resolution than that and Hollywood’s refusal to allow DVD upscaling over component video doesn’t really matter to me since a 480p image looks great on a 30″ screen.  The good points about my old CRT are its bright screen, wide color gamut, and broad viewing angle.

I sit about nine feet from the screen, so a 30″ screen is acceptable to me, although I’m told I could go all the way up to a 50″ set showing 1080p images from my Blu-ray player and still avoid seeing pixels and have a far more immersive movie experience. (Here is a nifty graph of screen resolutions and seating distances.)  I’m a single male, so I don’t mind if a 50″ set overpowers my living room, but I’m sure that most 480i images on broadcast television would look pretty lousy at that size and distance.  So I’ll probably wait and purchase a LED-backlit 50″ 1080p LCD television in a couple of years when they will be much cheaper and more video sources are high definition.

Anyway, back to the point.  The factory default for my TV is to overscan and the normal user menus offer no remedy.  The problem has been especially noticeable when using my Apple TV in 1080i mode, with text falling off the sides of the screen.  I also noticed it on election night when viewing HDTV over-the-air digital broadcasts – some of the local race results on the side of the screen were cut off.  I hate overscan, since I want to see every bit of the original image, although it seems many people don’t pay much attention to overscan except on their computer monitors when it is most noticeable and truly annoying.

I did an internet search on my old TV and, voilà, found instructions on how to access its mysterious service menu.  The secret keystrokes of MUTE-1-8-2-POWER on the remote bring up dozens of settings for the picture size, location, distortions, color, etc.  I took the internet’s advice and scribbled down the original settings so I could restore them if need be.

Then I tackled the 480p settings by loading my Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith DVD and activating its THX Optimizer.  That option shows test patterns, including a 16:9 circle and edge boxes so you can eliminate overscan while keeping the screen width-to-height ratio properly balanced.  Playing around with six of the two dozen settings achieved my goal of no overscan while retaining the proper width-to-height ratio.

Then I switched over to my Apple TV in 1080i mode and again fiddled with the service menu to eliminate overscan and keep the image in balance.  Unfortunately I don’t have a Blu-ray disc with test patterns, so I had to do a bit more guesswork on those settings.  If later I notice some problems, I’ll rent a Blu-ray test pattern disc from Netflix and do a more thorough fix.

But for now the overscan is gone and I am a happy viewer.  The entire images are mine, all mine.  And if a cameraman ever screws up and lets a boom mike into the shot, I’ll know it!

Netflix on TiVo

My purchase of a TiVo HD about a year ago continues to pay off.  Now I can watch streaming movies from Netflix on the TiVo and the experience beats the pants off watching Netflix streaming movies on a computer.  The instant gratification of a decent-quality stream is luxurious compared to the long wait to download a video to my Apple TV or to my TiVo from Amazon’s Video on Demand service, let alone waiting several days for a DVD or Blu-ray disc to arrive from Netflix.

Mind you, I still will insist of viewing great movies on Blu-ray discs I rent from Netflix.  The video and audio quality of an actual disc are far better than the Netflix Watch Instantly stream.  But the Netflix stream is certainly good enough for casual viewing.  It certainly looks okay on my old-school 30″ CRT HDTV, which has 800 lines of resolution.  I would likely be less satisfied if I had the gargantuan 50″ 1080p home theater TV I can’t justify buying (yet).  And the stream is free with my current five-discs-per-month Netflix account, versus having to pony up to rent or buy a movie via Amazon or the Apple TV.

I just watched The Pixar Story, a documentary that isn’t yet available on Netflix disc, with the new Netflix streaming service on the TiVo.  The video stream didn’t have to pause and buffer and only occasionally was I annoyed by macroblocks and other compression artifacts.  It is annoying to have to edit my “Watch Instantly Queue” on the computer rather than being able to edit it on the TiVo, but it could be even more frustrating to try to search for movies and edit the queue using the limited controls on a TiVo infrared remote.  CNET has a good review of the new service.

As Netflix expands its roster of Watch Instantly movies I will probably drop back to a cheaper 3-or-4 discs-per-month account, and I’m hopeful that their deals to get their streaming service on the TiVo, on the standalone Roku box, on Samsung players, and the Xbox 360 means they will survive the eventual death of movies on disc.  I do hope, however, that economics don’t doom Blu-ray discs too early.  Movie theaters are becoming obsolete and until we get larger bandwidth for true HD video streams we will still need Blu-ray discs to show quality movies with appropriate video and sound quality.