Does "Safe Area" apply to flat screens?

Question

Hi, can anyone tell me the importance of "Safe Area" these days (e.g. denoted by rectangles on screen when adding titles)? When viewing videos on 16:9 flat screens, are details outside the internal rectangle likely to be lost, or is this only likely when viewers forget to set the correct aspect ratio? Was "Safe Area" more relevant when viewing old TV screens pre-dating the LCD/LED flat screens of today? If detail is critical on flat screens, should I be considering the external rectangle rather than the internal one when adding titles for viewing on flat screens? I am putting together a slide show of old family photos and shrinking them enough within frame to add titles over black space beneath the photos so that clean names can be read more quickly than if superimposed. I like the classy look of gold lettering on black background beneath old black and white photos. When heads are close to top of frame in the photos, the images must be shrunk a little more than perhaps desirable to fit lettering beneath the photos within the internal rectangle when adding titles. The photos won't have to be shrunk so much if it is OK to fit all within the external rectangle for flat screen viewing.
Using PE10, Windows 7 64 bit, i7 377ok, 16Gb RAM, Geforce GTX 650, ASUS 21 inch 16:9 LED screen.

Answer 1

The Title Safe, and Action Safe Areas were designed for the overscan, that existed in older CRT TV screens - unless the TV was a calibrated "studio monitor," which showed 100% of the raster. The amount of overscan differed make to make, and even model to model, so a "worst-case scenario" was chosen.
With current flat screen TV's, there is still often some overscan, but it is much less, in most cases, than with the CRT tubes. Many producers have changed from the old Title Safe of 20% to about 10%, and for Action Safe, from the old 10% to about 5%.
As there can still be some overscan, going out to 100% of raster can create cutoffs, and that is obviously not wanted.
Taking into account the vast number of TV types available today, LED, LCD, Plasma, etc., and the number of screen mfgrs., I would not overlook overscan, but think that you would be safe going to the 10% for the Title Safe (shown as the outer Action Safe recangle) for your Titles - unless some family members still have 4:3 CRT TV's. If they do, then stick with the old Title Safe Area.
Good luck,
Hunt