Video overscan on Diamond-9000

[B.J.]

I've asked this question before, but perhaps not on this forum.
I have long noticed that the HD video from my Diamond 9000 didn't quite fit on the screen, ie the picture is missing a bit at the left, top, and right. The bottom seems OK. I've posted about this before, but people didn't see any problem with the video, but I thought perhaps there wasn't a good way to tell.
Well I was just scanning through the AMC-21 PBS feeds, and came across the "Schedule HD03" test pattern on 12180V, and it occurred to me that this is a good picture to compare.
The actual test pattern has a vertical yellow bar at the far left bottom, and a blue vertical bar at the far right bottom. THese bars should be just as wide as the bluish and redish bars next to them, however my Diamond displays them cut off so that I can only see about 1/2 of the width of these bars. Also, the "Schedule HD03" text at the top should be a full space down from the top, a space about equal to the height of the letters, however my Diamond displays this text almost touching the top of the screen, a space of about 1/3 the thickness of the lines of the lettering, let alone the height of the letters.
Anyway, for anyone with a Diamond 9000, I'd be curious with respect to what you see on this test pattern? Mainly curious if this is just an issue with my receiver, and issue with receivers that have that bad hacker firmware, or an issue with all Diamond 9000s.
Thanks

 

[Lak7]

How are you connected to the TV, HDMI or Component?

 

[Anole]

. . . and also, what sort of TV do you have?

Oh, and what mode is it in?
HDTVs have zoom settings.

 

[Corrado]

I'll take a look tonight on my Diamond on the test patterns. Overall, I think these receivers are among the best. I've been using mine for nearly 4 months now and have no complaints.

I noticed right away that depending on what mode you're watching, it seems that some settings made in the video menu do not exactly reflect what the shortcut remote buttons control. Experiment with the wide screen remote button and the menu control. It seems better when set within the menu.

 

[B.J.]

How are you connected to the TV, HDMI or Component?

. . . and also, what sort of TV do you have?

Oh, and what mode is it in?
HDTVs have zoom settings.

Well, as usual, now I'm confused. I was pretty certain that it was just the Diamond, and not on my other receivers, but now I notice that the Azbox is doing the same thing, so maybe it IS my TV. I'm pretty sure though that I previously tried the Coolsat, and it was OK, but I guess I'm going to have to try that again to make sure. I know that my network feed through my Roku is perfect, however it has an adjustment to fit the image to the screen. Anyway, the TV is a SAMSUNG LCD. I've had the Diamond on both HDMI and Component and it was the same both places. Right now, I have the Diamond and my Roku on the 2 component inputs, and I have the Azbox and the PopcornHour on the 2 HDMI inputs, and I trade inputs whenever I use a blueray HD disk player. I guess I'll have to try the Popcorn Hour too. I don't think my Samsung as any adjustments to adjust this type of thing, at least not that I saw in the manual, but perhaps there are some hidden functions. I'll have to look on the web. I originally noticed this when watching election returns on a local OTA ATSC network channel playing on the Diamond, and when I switched to another source, I didn't see the problem, however I can't remember if I was comparing to the built in tuner, my Coolsat, or the Roku playing a stream from my Air2PC. So if the latter, it might have been corrected by the Roku's adjustment. I guess I have more testing to do. Thanks.

 

[Anole]

My Syntax Olevia 542i is maybe 4 years old.
It has 10 inputs, including the tuner.
The receiver seems to remember the screen settings for -each- input, independently.
At first, that threw me for a loop, but eventually I realized how important the feature was.
I'm sure your set is the same.

So, you'll want to set the brightness, sharpness, et al, for each source, to optimize the picture.
For a time, I had one satellite receiver plugged into two inputs, one set for no zoom, and the other zoomed in to fill the screen with a SD program.
When watching Formula One cars in SD, the horizontal stretching didn't matter so much.
For other viewing, it did.

Oh, and I think my set has at least four zoom / stretch choices.
Yours may have more to choose from.

 

[mikelib]

B. J.,
Have tried the P size button on the remote?

 

[B.J.]

B. J.,
Have tried the P size button on the remote?

I generally use a universal remote, but I think that button just allows you to select between the various aspect ratios and the zooms doesn't it? None of that helps. Ie I'm already in the right aspect ratio, and the zooms make it much worse. I guess I'm looking for an adjustment similar to what is on my Roku, which allows me to just make fine adjustments to height and width and vertical/horizontal placement. I'll bet that there is some hidden setup screen that lets you do that.

 

[Lak7]

Are there format settings on the TV?

 

[B.J.]

BTW, I've pretty much determined that this overscan is also seen on the built in ATSC tuner, so it must be the TV, and not the Diamond.
The TV is a 1080p TV, and I set all my HD input devices to 1080i or p. Most of what I watch is in 1080i.
Re aspect ratio, the TV can be set to either 16x9, 4x3, a wide fit, and a couple zooms, but since I'm watching 16x9 content, anything but the 16x9 would make the issue worse.
What I'd really like to find would be to find a fine tune adjustment on the TV of the vertical and horizontal position and dimensions. This is what I was able to do with my ROKU to get things to fit the screen perfectly, but when I did it, I assumed that the TV was OK, and it was the Roku that was off, but now I see that it's the TV that's off.
Seems like there must be an adjustment, but you probably have to get into a mode not easily available to the user. I remember my old Sony had a very complete but complicated screen that allowed you to adjust everything under the sun. I guess I'll have to do some Googling on this receiver.

Fooey. I thought that I had a problem with one receiver, but instead it's everything except for the good old ROKU.

 

[B.J.]

UPDATE:
I started Googling, which quickly led me to the AVS forum, where I was already registered, but it took me a while to remember my password.

Anyway, I found out that it is apparently well known that there is about 2% overscan in my Samsung 4096 TV, so even though I would have estimated it at more than 2%, apparently what I'm observing may be normal on my TV. I'm currently downloading a new firmware version for the TV, which supposedly eliminates the overscan, however I haven't done the reading yet to see how difficult it is to install the firmware... I may just decide to live with a problem that I didn't even notice until recently.

 

[Tron]

I believe firmware installation involves using the service USB port on the monitor, although I'm not sure on the model you have. Be careful when upgrading firmware, as you may void any warranty that remains on the unit. Sammys are great monitors, rated among the best, so there should be some workable fix for this that will give you a true pixel count when watching a 1080i/p source.