Hey all,

Thanks in advance for any help and advice!

I went to my wife's parents' houes yesterday to enjoy som high-def football on their new 50" plasma set. It looked simply gorgeous. And DVDs looked unbelievable too.

They got a set made by Philips (I think) and they paid a pretty penny for it (~$10K).

I any event, it seemed as though, when playing DVDs, the TV was overscanning by about 10%, which seemed like a lot to me. We watched Farenheit 9/11 and some of the subtitles were being cropped off the bottom of the screen. I tried changing the screen aspect (wide vs. cinema vs. full vs. zoom), but I could never get the image to shrink back down and show me the whole picture. I fooled with the settings, and could shift the picture up and down, left and right considerably - to the point where I could move the image so far that people's heads would get cut out of one side, or information previously unseen woudl emerge from the side or top/bottom of the screen.

Any advice on getting into the TV somehow and reducing this overscan? Or is this something that you need to get a professional in to fool with the internal settings?

Hi Capn,

It may be an intrinsic flaw of the Philips plasma panel, but it shouldn't overscan to that extreme. I'd try and reach a tech support person at Philips, but that company tends to be impossible in those areas. Maybe Philips has improved in that regard.

Otherwise, you might quizz an Imaging Science Foundation-certified calibration guy as to whether it can be corrected and how much that would cost. I suspect that it can be adjusted with the factory calibration settings. To find an ISF guy in your area, go to the ISF website.

I do not suggest you try this yourself. I received the tech manual for calibration of a DLP display I have on loan and it is technically intimidating. I'd have to study the thing for ages before I'd attempt it myself. Very complicated.

Besides, if your wife's parents can afford 10 grand for the plasma panel, then it's worthwhile spending a few hundred for proper calibration.

Regards,

Agreed, and thanks, Alan. It's funny - my father in law has been willing to spend quite a pretty penny to get his home theater the way that he wants it. It's amazing where he blew his wad (TV, interconnects, speaker wire), but skimped on some other stuff (Bose mini-cubes, cheap components). I will try to talk to him about getting in ISF tech in the house, but I don't know how far I'll get him to go. The tendancy of course is to want to stop the bleeding. He thought he was investing abotu 10 grand to buy a new TV set. He forgot about the 350 installation charge, the $500 tv mount, $800 in interconnects and speaker cable (despite my advice to the contrary) and other associated headaches with getting HDTV in his living room.

I don't know how keen he'll be on the idea - maybe that will be a Christmas gift or something to him. I'll have his set calibrated.

Anyway, thanks for the reply. I'll let you know how it turns out.