Game Clock for Superbowl cut-off?

[mnr929rr]

why should it be 5 %? I should have said (an overscan issue).I personally think it should be your own preference.If 5% cuts all edges off why would you want that?

[Tom Sielicki]

Well here is what video essentials says about it.

"Briefly, the overscan test pattern describes the active picture are of the video signal itself. Most display devices do not display all of the active picture area. They scan the video signal active picture area out beyond the edges of the displayed area on the TV set. This test pattern gives you the ability to determine by what percent they are over scanning the picture. In program production we assume that your home set will be overscanned by 5% on each side (including top and bottom). That area is known as Safe Action. Any action a producer would like to have you see is placed inside this area. A loss of 10% on each side is known as Safe Title. This is the maximum amount we anticipate your set being overscanned. Any titles we would like to make sure you see are fit inside this area."

The problem with going lower than 5% is picking up unwanted video that might cause problems.  I know this is true for NTSC but I would think this is not the case for ATSC.  

I guess I would not mind hearing other opinions on this.   Is zero overscan the way to go?  I think I will tweak my TV tonight and see if it causes problems.

But on my point,  ABC should have had that logo in the 5% or greater area anyway and nobody would have been complaining.

[Pat]

First, if your overscan is excessive, and you can document it, so to speak, I would think its a warranty item to have it fixed.

Second, the way I did the HD overscan was using the test pattern that channel 58 had up for a few days when they went on the air.  The Mitsubishi's, and probably all the others, have different settings for each input, so setting your DVD input (from Avia) has no effect on the HD input.  But, in fact, since stations seldom transmit a test patterm, you can attempt to set overscan by hand with no particular signal, just a program.

Knowing what parameters to change is a whole other matter, of course, and its not for the faint-hearted.  But, knowing that, the important thing is to write down or otherwise store the digital parameters, which will allow you to return to the previous settings if you don't like the results.  (Never mess with any analog devices by hand -- you'll never get them back where they were, and you can damage the set.)

You will see the picture shrink until you can see the edges.  Then you can back off just until you don't see them any more.  This may, and probably will, affect your geometry and/or convergence and/or video positioning negatively, so be prepared to touch these up -- you can usually get a satisfactory, if not perfect, result without test patterns, even if you have to compromise on how much overscan you eliminate or how much geometry distortion or positioning error you can tolerate.

Third, with regard to the question about how far to go -- all the way to 0% or not, I was unable to get that far before geometry distortions were no longer correctable.  I ended up about 3 or 4%.  But if 0% is achievable, go for it.