I am slowly getting to grips with my new WD TV Live. One thing I have noticed is that when I play back media on my 55" LED TV the videos do look slightly ‘zoomed in’. I believe in the old days on CRT TVs this was often the result of ‘over-scanning’ where you had to allow for a ‘safe area’ if editing videos because the real edges of the video footage might get cut-off to differing amounts on CRT TVs.
In this digital age of flat panel TVs, tablets etc then I have noticed that this issue is very much reduced and whereas you might still have a small area around the edge of a video frame that might get trimmed off - generally it’s only fractional nowadays in my experience.
When watching my videos played from the WD TV Live it seemed to me that there was a little too much zooming going on and I noticed that if I went into the setup on the WD TV Live I could select “Screen Size Calibration”. By default it is set to 100% but I found that the 95% actually works better for me and I get ALL of the video frame shown within the 55" LED TV picture area.
The problem is that whereas I think that 95% is better, ideally I would really appreciate being able to nudge that up to 96% or 97%. However, the only steps available are in 5% intervals. At 95% my picture is a tiny bit too small but at 100% it is definitely over-stretched. Quite frustrating.
I kinda realise it’s a bit unlikely but has anyone managed to find a method of ‘tweaking’ the percentage settings to achieve greater degree of control accuracy? Or is it just me who has noticed this issue and am I being too ‘picky’??
Tall order but I thought it worth a post to see if some clever person has managed to ‘hack’ the WD TV Live to get single percentage picture size calibration steps… or better still, is there any chance WD would implement this feature if I asked them nicely?
Thanks for the replies. I have checked my Samsung TV (it’s a 55" 3D LED F8000) and there are options for picture sizing, zoom etc. However none of them really addressed the issue with the WD TV LIve picture size.
I agree that with the later flat panel LED/LCD TVs and monitors, the old issues with overscanning that happened to various degrees with CRT TVs has, almost completely disappeared. However, that is even more or a reason why I am surprised that the WD TV Live seems to be overscaling the image when picture size is set to 100%.
It’s simple to see just how much the WD TV Live is overscaling by just going into Picture “Screen Size Calibration” and while keeping an eye on the menu background wallpaper and text relative to the screen, note that when you try switching from 100% to 95% there is so much more of the background picture, and a wider border between the menu text and the TV picture frame that it suggests to me the WD TV Live is not scaling correctly at 100%. At 95% it’s not as if the black border width increases much, if any at all. This suggests that there is quite a bit more ‘picture’ available that is being ‘lost off the edges’ when WD TV Live is at 100% picture calibration.
The downside of this overscaling is that, for instance, on my edited videos where I have put subtitles on, then the subtitles are noticeably closer to the bottom of the screen than they were when I edited the videos in my video editing program - and indeed a lot closer than they are when I view the same videos on my old Asus media player, Samsung tablets etc. Also, although not a huge issue with HD footage - the video being watched using the WD TV Live is going to be a fraction ‘softer’ because it is effectively being ‘zoomed’ a little on the TV screen.
Getting back to the available settings on my Samsung TV (picture size settings) then another reason why fiddling with this is not going to work is because none of my other media devices (such as two Humax PVRs, a DVD player, A Blu-ray player, my smarphone, tablet or Asus media player) seem to overscale the image like the WD TV Live does. I would screw up the picture from all my other devices just to accommodate the WD TV Live. Not practical or desirable.
I must confess that I am surprised that I have not seen anyone else comment about this trait that the WD TV LIve has. I am prepared to accept that possibly it’s something to do with my setup arrangement, or the way I have it set up the WD TV Live - but honestly can’t see what that could be (and I have tweaked almost every setting there is on the WD TV Live), and I have not experienced this kind of issue with any other modern video/photo playing devices. Very very weird.
As joey has said you need to set up your TV to screen fit. You should be able to do this independently on each tv input so it will not affect your other players etc. The reason why this is not a big deal with other users is that they either don’t notice the unnecessary overscan which you get with the other TV screen modes or they are like me already set up with no overscan on their TV.
If you are not using screen fit then your testing of the screen calibration makes no sense. Your TV will be over scanning and not the WD player. In fact I would try screen fit on all your devices as its likely that the TV is zooming their outputs as well for no reason. The only problem you get now with screen fit is the the possibility of seeing some undesirable lines at the top and bottom on some broadcast signals.
I tried your screen test with my TV set to just scan / screen fit and there is absolutely no loss of the background picture at 100%. You can look at items on the edge of the picture at 95% and those items can still be seen at 100%.
You could also check with this test image. I can see the tips of all 4 arrowheads which equals 0% overscan.
