Overscan Option?

Hi, guys. I've been meaning to get to this for a while but just haven't had the TV enough to myself to play around - or remember when I do. The TV seems to overscan way too much - at least using component video. Even if I have my Sony's overscan set to -1, allowing me to see even more of the picture than normal, the TV still cuts off way too much. I didn't actually notice it until I started using the time stamp feature in iMovie. When the time stamp is viewed on a computer playing the QT, there is quite a bit of room to the left of the text before getting to the edge of the picture. Watching on the TV though cuts off all that extra room plus half of the 1st letter of the month and first number of the time. That's a lot of picture missing. Its even worse if I don't change the setting on my Sony. I've tried multiple TV output resolutions and it made no difference. Tonight, I'm hoping to try this with a different TV on a different TV using HDMI. My question is... does anyone know of a secret way to change overscan on the TV itself? I can't believe its not a menu option. As a side note, I'm curious if this is done on purpose to make the black bars on widescreen Hollywood films not seem so large, hence making the picture look larger. Personally I'd prefer not having my picture cut off.

Ha, sorry WC, I didn't mean to imply you didn't know about overscan. I've read a lot of your other posts on the subject so I knew you did. I do as well, but you do make a great point that I didn't get before. iMovie 09 may be putting the time stamp outside the safe area. Can the safe area be shown in iMovie though? Now I'm curious how much more picture is being cut off by my Sony LCD rear projector, compared to the flat panel I have so I guess I'll still post back, but thanks to both of you for clearing up that the TV isn't adding to this issue.

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Display Pref Overscan Options

Throughout this forum people are having mixed results connecting a Mac Mini to a HDTV.
Often noted for overscan issues is "deselecting" the overscan option in System Preferences/Displays.
Can anyone tell me why when my Mini is connected to my Sony HDTV via DVI-to HDMI, this option does not present itself.
When I connect my 17" PowerBook to this same TV/same connection & I open System Preferences/Displays, I get a number of addtional tabs/buttons, one of which is "Options". Within this tab/button, an "overscan" toggle is available.
The ability to access this option on the Mini would get me most of what I have been trying to do w/apps like DisplayConfg (with which I've had less than satisfactory results).
1) Why does the PowerBook give me this, but the Mini won't?
2) What can I do to provide/install this native OSX functionality on the Mini?
(Mini is: 1.42 Ghz/512 ram running 10.4.5)
Any help would keep more hair on my head.
SB
17 PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

BSteely,
Apologize for not following-up earlier, but it was just this past weekend that I've been in a position to get back to working on this.
I'm happy to say, with regard to accessing "Display Preferences/Options/Overscan", there was a break through in my case.
The simple answer........an install of "Mac OS X Update 10.4.5 Combo" (available @ www.apple.com/support/downloads/), cleared out some unknown conflict. I now can control overscan @ the Mini. As you would expect, the display is bordered (pillar & letter boxed), but with settings @ the TV, am able to get a nearly perfect fit.
The highest resolution that will display is 1280x720 (although 1920x1080 interlaced is available in Preferences - this causes screen to go blank). For the time being this resolution is acceptable. I'll save 1080i for another day.
Anyway thanks for all of your help on this matter & throughout this forum.
SB
(Mini is: 1.42 Ghz/512 ram running 10.4.5) Still in warranty
17 PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

TV Overscan option is shaded out on nvidia-settings - How to fix it?

I had this problem before already, but I forgot what I did to able to change nvidia-setting overscan option.
At the moment it is shaded out so that I can't change it.
What can I do?
Nevermind... I kind of solved it. I didn't have to do it for this tv.
Last edited by kdar (2012-03-14 04:25:25)

I had same problem. I removed the back cover, and warmed wi-fi module by hairdryer of my wife). five days wi-fi works great. I do not know what will happen next.
during operation iphone must be turned off. time of heating is near five minutes. wifi module is located upper the battery, on the upper right corner of device.

Where did the overscan option go?!

Has anyone noticed with the recent (in the last couple of weeks or so) updates that the overscan option (when connected to a LCD screen through DVI-HDMI) has vanished?
It means now when I watch anything from my computer I have no option but to have bits cut off!

Ah, no worries, it came back when I re-plugged in the TV! I think it's either Leopard playing silly-sods as it likes to do, or erm, Leopard I guess!

How do I get back my overscan option?

I need it I think to display full screen on my TV when I hook the mini displayport and HDMI cable to my Mac.
My overscan button does not exist. I hear other people have the same issue. PLEASE HELP!

Eithe ropen a bunch of files or post in the Pages forum area where those experts abode.
https://discussions.apple.com/community/iwork/pages
This is the MacBook Pro hardware forum.

Disable overscan

I just did a clean install of Mountain Lion on my Late 2009 Mini. I use a 55" TV as the only monitor connected to the Mini and it is overscanning pretty badly. I do not have the option button to turn off the overscan feature. There has to be a way to do this without enabling Airplay, right?

I have the same issue. On my 2013 Macbook Pro running 10.8.2 I am connecting to a Sony 65 inch rear projection tv. The top and bottom of the screen are cut off. On my 2009 MBP running Snow Leopard, there is an option for overscan. When overscan is on it exhibits the same behavior as my 2013 MBP. When overscan is off, the picture displays normally. Is there some reason the overscan option isn't showing up in Mountain Lion? Unfortunately my TV does not have any settings which control overscan so I'm kind of stuck.

Overscan missing from new Nvidia Drivers - Mac MIni 2010

So I was able to install new Nvidia drivers on my Mac mini 2010, however, there are no overscan options.. and my tv is connected via HDMI. Is there any workaround for this?

The final version of Appleworks 6 does in fact work on the Intel Mini under Leopard -- but Apple doesn't support it, nor ship it with the new Minis.
A free office suite that is MS Office compatible is NeoOffice:
http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/maindownload.php
a similar alternative is OpenOffice:
http://www.openoffice.org/
There is no office suite that is directly compatible with Appleworks files, but if you install AppleWorks 6 on your Mini, you could export files in formats that other office programs can read.

10.6.3 and overscan issues

Since updating to 10.6.3 when I plug my 1080p TV in via HDMI>DVI adaptor instead of getting the option of a resolution of 1920x1080 it comes up with 1080p TV. If I choose this the picture overscans. If I uncheck the overscan option in Displays I get thick black border.
Can anyone help me get it back to 1920x1080?

Probably an index problem. Since you are using a MobileMe account, which I presume is operating as an IMAP account, you may merely only need to remove the account and add it back. But you can also force reindexing. Try removing the Envelope Index to force reindexing of all mailboxes -- see:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mail/3.0/en/14019.html
When there are only have POP accounts, then you only need deal with the Envelope Index removal, but if any IMAP/MobileMe or Exchange accounts, note their special treatment.
After you do this, you should again try to open the mailboxes.
Ernie

Mini-DVI TV Output Problem

I recently purchased the Mini-DVI to Video Adapter for my Macbook at an 'authorized' Mac reseller here in Seoul, South Korea (we also use NTSC here). When I got home I turned off my mac, hooked everything up, turned on the TV and then turned on the Mac, and then clicked 'Detect Displays'.
But the Mac doesn't correctly detect the TV. In the display menu it gives me display resolutions as if the TV were a seperate monitor (like 1600x1200, 60mhz, millions of colors). I tried every resolution option and the one that works best (and that it sets to after clicking 'Detect Displays') on the TV displays six small, black and white, distorted images of the screen scrolling vertically. Other resolutions do not display as well as that.
The TV itself is fine, I can hook other things into the composite inputs with no problem. For some reason the Macbook just won't output a signal my TV will understand. Is there a way to manually tell it what resolution to output? Did I just buy a faulty adapter? Would the composite cord itself make any difference?
Please help! Thanks.

One last try to get some help...
Can someone tell me what Resolution options are available in the Display menu when the Macbook correctly detects a TV? Does it just say PAL / NTSC with overscan options? Thanks.

Mini to old regular TV

Hey I'm connecting the Mini to my regular TV using the Apple DVI-to-Video adapter, now the picture on the TV doesn't sit right, it doesn't fill the whole screen, and it goes a too up and right, meaning I have black lines on the bottom and on the left, anyway to change the positioning?

Have a mess around with the screen resolutions in System Prefs. Also try turning on the overscan option.
There are some 3rd party apps that allow you to specify what exact resolution you want to use, but otherwise you will never get the image to take up the whole screen the way it fills up a computer display.

How can I callibrate my CRT TV on my Mac Pro 1.1?

I am the lucky owner of a 32" Philips HD CRT TV. As far as I know my model is the only HD CRT TV produced by Philips (along with a 28" model).
My TV has great colors and the deepest black. I want to use it as my main screen with my Mac Pro.
The Mac Pro recognizes its resolution immediately. The only problem is that I need to callibrate the screen size because the OS screen is outside the TV's visible boundaries.
Is there a software inside the Snow Leopard OS X that callibrates CRT screens? Is there something by Nvidia (the card on the Mac Pro is the 7300GT)?

A.C. Paschalis wrote:
The Mac Pro recognizes its resolution immediately. The only problem is that I need to callibrate the screen size because the OS screen is outside the TV's visible boundaries.
This sounds like overscan. Over the forum, we can't guess whether it's because an Overscan option is on in the OS X Displays preference, or because of a display size setting on the TV. You'll have to check both.

Video Out to TV Issue

My AluMacbook recently stopped filling the screen of my TV and macbook screen when in mirror mode. I have it connected to my Sharp LC-32D50U (max resolution, 1360x768) via the DVI input. When set at 1360x768 i get black borders on the sides of the TV and i also get a single black borders on the top of my macbook. When i set the macbook to 1280x720 the lower portion of picture is cut off on both the TV and the Macbook. I had it working flawlessly yesterday with the TV displaying a beautiful 1360x768 image and the Macbook maintaining its 1280x800 while in mirror mode but now it's randomly not working. Nothing has changed. Any ideas? Already zapped PRAM and issue persists. There is no overscan option on Display settings for me to select and the TV is set to 1360x768. Already reset TV settings and issue still persists as well. Looking for help here. Thanks!

Of course your TV does scaling. That's how a 720P signal fills the entire physical resolution of your TV (which you state as being 1360x768). Thus the original signal into the TV is 1280x720 and the TV upscales that to something near to 1360x768 (the full physical resolution of your LCD display). In this case (by design) the image looks about as good as it can (for your TV) and the image aspect ratios fit exactly which means that there is no distortion in the final image.
If you input a non-standard resolution into your TV it will try to scale the image as best as it can but it is possible that some combinations will result in black bars or overscan (parts of the image will be missing) or distortion in the final image (stretched vertically or horizontally). Your TV could offer some combination of settings that will get you closer to full screen without too much distortion but it's probably not going to handle every input it receives in the best possible way.
Remember also that LCD, DLP, and plasma TVs run at a fixed physical resolution. The only way they can support other "resolutions" is through scaling or by accepting overscan (you lose part of the image) or by placing black bars around the image (the latter to support input resolutions lower than your TV's physical resolution). Typically when inputing a non-standard resolution you will get some type of scaling which may also result in a distortion of the image (if the aspect ratios aren't the same).
The inputs that your TV will probably handle the best ("standard" resolutions) are standard definition NTSC and PAL, 480p, 720p, and 1080i. You can consider NTSC to be equivalent to 640x480. Your TV may also handle some of the standard PC video resolutions (such as VGA, SVGA, and XGA -- 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768 respectively). Anything other than these (or less) is probably supported only at the discretion of the particular TV manufacturer (or by pure "dumb luck").
Of course Apple is also figuring into this as in the "Mirror Displays" mode they apparently adjust the output resolution depending upon the settings for the MacBook's internal LCD (and vice versa). They may do this to try to keep the aspect ratios into reasonably close agreement (there may also be limitations in what Apple's video driver can support and also in what the graphics card can support).
I also would not completely trust what is shown in the MacBook's Displays control panel (for resolution) when in the mirrored display mode. What is shown there may only be approximate, the video driver probably does what it wants in order to achieve what it thinks is best in the mirrored display mode.
I guess what I'm saying after all of this verbiage is that your mileage may vary. However, I still think that setting the MacBook's external (DVI to the TV) resolution to 1280x720 and leaving the MacBook's LCD set to 1280x800 is your best option. With this setting you'll have small black bars on the top and bottom of your MacBook's LCD but the image aspect ratios will match (no distortion in the images) and your TV should run in full screen at near to its best image quality.

Can't see entire destop on a TV

I have connected my Powerbook to my TV using the DVI to VGA converter. My TV will take a max resolution of 640x480. I have set the display to mirror and set the resolution to 640x480. I can see it on my TV but the top and bottom are cut off and I can't see the entire desktop. I can't see the menu bar at the top and can see the very top of the dock.
I just can't seem to figure out how to see the whole thing. Am I out of luck?
This is an older laptop that has been sitting in the closet for a while, I decided to use it so that I can use iTunes in the living room.

The problem is that it does not detect the display as a TV instead it is "VGA Color Display". And when it isn't detected as a TV, the overscan option isn't available.
I changed my my theory on this and just plugged in to S-video and that solved my problem. There may be others that are experiencing this so I will leave this open a little while and see if there is a solution.
Message was edited by: Tihstae

How to display menus on 40" TV

I just started connecting my MB to a 40" Samsung LCD TV via a mini display port to HDMI cable. The picture is fine except the menu dos not show on the TV. I have tried the different display resolution preferences and that doesn't work. Should I be able to display the menu and if so, how?
Thanks.

The "Overscan" option in Mac OS X's Displays panel only applies to analog TVs (in fact it isn't even available unless you are using one of Apple's video converter that's outputting NTSC or PAL signals). Or, at least that's been my experience with my MacBook when connected to my high-definition digital TV.
When you connect to a high-definition TV using HDMI or DVI for all intents and purposes you are connecting to a computer monitor and thus your TV must have a setting that allows it to behave as such. On my Toshiba Regza high-definition LCD TV this is called its "Native" picture size mode (as opposed to other settings like "Natural," "4:3 HD," "TheaterWide1," and others). On my Toshiba the "Native" mode is described as follows (in the user manual):
Native mode scales the video to display the entire picture within the borders of the screen (i.e.
no overscanning).
However, I think support for such scaling and picture handling is dependent on the manufacturer and thus it's possible that not every HD TV will offer these options.

Benq v2410 display problem

Is anyone else out there using a Benq v2410 display with their iMac? I think I have a driver problem where the display will not go into the correct 1920x1080 display mode. There is a "1080p" option in the display settings with what looks like a television icon beside it. If that is selected and the overscan option is selected the display is filled but I see all sort of display artifacts. For instance, go try and do a color calibration and the background flickers. If the "overscan" is turned off, there is about a 1 inch boarder around the entire image and the background does not flicker. I believe this is working in some sort of native resolution. The maximum resolution in the display settings appears to be 1600 x 900.
The published native resolution of the display is 1920x1080.
Thoughts?

Hi Dennis,
Thanks for the feedback. As you suggested is exactly what I have attempted to accomplish. That is, miniDVI to DVI (Apple adapter) which connects to a DVI to HDMI cable to the monitor. I cannot achieve the native resolution. For some reason the iMac thinks I have a television attached.
I tried a DVI to VGA adapter on my Macbook Pro and then connected to the monitor using a VGA cable and the display settings come up with the 1920 x 1080 display mode and the monitor is in its native resolution.
However, if I use a mini-DVI to DVI adapter connected to my iMac and connect the DVI to VGA adapter to that and connect the monitor (VGA), there is no signal. I suspect that the Apple DVI to VGA adapter requires power and because of the intervening mini-DVI to DVI adapter there is no power available.
So, I have no way of getting my 24" iMac to talk to the display at 1920 x 1080.
Seems like a bug to me ... and I cannot even report the bug using Bug Reporter, gee whiz.
Any other thoughts?

Overscan Option?

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