What is overscan?

[dolfnman]

I'm a fairly new owner of a Tosh 50HX81. I am learning slowly about tweaking the set. I have learned to do the 56 pt. converengence and while utilizing the VE DVD I saw the set was not centered, so I corrected that. But what is overscan? I hear people talk about reducing overscan. I see on the VE disc a overscan image with the white lines, but am not sure what I should be doing with that. If I adjust the HIT and WID I see the numbers on the image get a little fuzzy, is this what I am supposed to be looking at to judge overscan. Any tips would be appreciated

PS
I always right down all my settings before test different parameter.

[sieve11]

I'll try to give you my non-engineering explanation. It goes something like this.

Underscan means that total available image is seen on your screen, plus a little black around the outside edges. So, you are not filling your screen space with image.

Overscan means that the total available image has been expanded beyond the view of your screen. So, you are losing some of the image outside of your viewing area.

In a perfect setup, your screen would be flat, with square corners, and your source image would exactly line up, corner to corner, so that your source was the same size as your monitor.

BTW, are you the one who asked this question at the HDTV News Forum?

Hope that helps.

[emthree]

Just to add to what Sieve wrote:

The widescreen TVs are 16:9 ratio i.e. a ratio of 1.77 where as many a widescreen movie has a ratio of 1:85. In order to fit these movies fully onto the TV screen, almpst all 16:9 sets overscan a little bit as otherwise there will some, albeit very little, balck bar space left on the top and bottom.

[dolfnman]

Thanks guys,

Sieve11 I am the guy who put the same post on IloveHDTV forum. Thats a great forum. I read many of your responses. I am really getting into this whole HDTV thing!! I may get a little compulsive about the picture quality, but when you have something that you can keep tweaking to make better I just can't help myself! Plus I want to make sure I get the most out of my set.