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There is one unfortunate artifact from NTSC that is still with us: overscan. For some reason TVs will take a digital signal from HDMI, crop off the edges, and s

There is one unfortunate artifact from NTSC that is still with us: overscan. For some reason TVs will take a digital signal from HDMI, crop off the edges, and stretch the image. So some video game consoles and streaming devices allow you to shrink their output to compensate. It’s madness. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overscan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overscan

abstractbarista 5y ago
I turned this off on my TV and was just like...wow! So much better! From what I could tell, my TV was taking a perfect 1920x1080 signal, and instead of perfectly stretching it to 4K (4 pixels on the screen for every pixel in the input), it was first cropping the edges, then stretching. This results in clean lines in the input becoming more "fuzzy" on the screen, which a very slight zoom effect. It's maddening and I can't understand why it would be the default. Across my HDMI sources, TV apps, and live TV, none of these signals need any cropping. They fit perfectly with my settings.
- dylan604 5y ago
  legacy is difficult to overcome. let's call it the granddaddy of all tech debt
dylan604 5y ago
Good ol' overscan helped "hide" the horizontal and vertical blanking. Litterally turning on/off the scanning beam of electrons while it retraced from left to right and from bottom to top. the number of milliseconds each of those on/off blinks required. lots of monitors had an underscan mode and professional monitors even had H/V delays where when all of them were enabled, you'd get the cross pulse mode that would allow you to see lots of interesting info that lived in the overscan portions much more easily. things like VITC and CC "marching ants" in the scan lines outside of active picture. there were even ID tags that could get stored into the lines. And then we had the infamous Blue-only mode to help set the colors on the monitor. 100% bars, 75% bars. full field vs SMPTE. pluge. ramps. audio sweeps. good grief, it's actually starting to feel like an actual funeral of people trading stories of memories good or bad. rot in hell NTSC!!

abstractbarista 5y ago

I turned this off on my TV and was just like...wow! So much better! From what I could tell, my TV was taking a perfect 1920x1080 signal, and instead of perfectly stretching it to 4K (4 pixels on the screen for every pixel in the input), it was first cropping the edges, then stretching. This results in clean lines in the input becoming more "fuzzy" on the screen, which a very slight zoom effect. It's maddening and I can't understand why it would be the default. Across my HDMI sources, TV apps, and live TV, none of these signals need any cropping. They fit perfectly with my settings.

dylan604 5y ago
legacy is difficult to overcome. let's call it the granddaddy of all tech debt

dylan604 5y ago

Good ol' overscan helped "hide" the horizontal and vertical blanking. Litterally turning on/off the scanning beam of electrons while it retraced from left to right and from bottom to top. the number of milliseconds each of those on/off blinks required. lots of monitors had an underscan mode and professional monitors even had H/V delays where when all of them were enabled, you'd get the cross pulse mode that would allow you to see lots of interesting info that lived in the overscan portions much more easily. things like VITC and CC "marching ants" in the scan lines outside of active picture. there were even ID tags that could get stored into the lines. And then we had the infamous Blue-only mode to help set the colors on the monitor. 100% bars, 75% bars. full field vs SMPTE. pluge. ramps. audio sweeps. good grief, it's actually starting to feel like an actual funeral of people trading stories of memories good or bad. rot in hell NTSC!!