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720p overscan issue with Panasonic TV.

Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 7:48 pm
by cynan
I have a smaller Panasonic LCD (TC-37LZ800) that I am using to play around with the HDMI out (MLH connector) on my Galaxy Nexus phone. As with most phones, the phone mirrors its native and external display. As the Galaxy Nexus is 720p native, this is what is output to my Panasonic. The exception is when viewing 1080p video in full screen mode; in such an instance the phone outputs 1080p and everything is peachy.

The Panasonic TV in question overscans 720p for some reason. This means that when viewing anything except 1080 full screen video on the phone, about 5% of the screen around the edges, both horizontally and vertically, are clipped (I can't see it). The TV does not have this clipping issue with 1080p.

As Android (ICS) does not offer anything equivalent to the "flat panel scaling" correction, as found in Radeon drivers, to address this very issue, I suppose I will have to live with it?

Does anyone know if I can access a service menu on the Panasonic to adjust how the TV's scaler processes 720p signals? Or any other ideas about how to resolve overscan at 720p? The fact that this overscan is not easily defeatable in the TV's regular menus is kind of galling. But I guess it's not the end of the world either way... Although the fact that this is messing with my Angry Birds experience is making me loose sleep at night :D

Re: 720p overscan issue with Panasonic TV.

Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 11:40 pm
by Flying Fox
Try Menu -> Picture -> Advanced picture -> HD size, that should do it.

Re: 720p overscan issue with Panasonic TV.

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2012 5:49 pm
by cynan
Flying Fox wrote:
Try Menu -> Picture -> Advanced picture -> HD size, that should do it.


Yeah, it should. Unfortunately the HD size option is greyed out with a 720p input signal (though not with 1080). I think that unless I can get into a service menue and enable this or configure how the TV handles 720p, then there's nothing to be done about it. I wonder what Panasonic had against 720p when they designed this model...

Re: 720p overscan issue with Panasonic TV.

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2012 7:33 pm
by cynan
So I'm giving up. I managed to get into one service mode, but I only found color-related adjustments, nothing like V-AMP/POS or H-AMP/POS or anything else that might be used to adjust resolution scaling... I spent about an hour on AVSforum and apparently the 720p overscan issue is a known "bug" that Panasonic never bothered to fix and it's like this on a few of their TVs. It's not that surprising as until the Galaxy Nexus, I've not noticed the issue in my 3.5 years with the TV as both the Xbox 360 and PC I've used with it were always at 1920x1080 input resolution. There were a few disgruntled folks in the forums with consoles outputing in 720p though...

I did try my Denon AVR receiver as an intermediary as it has a built in scaler. However, it seems to only upscale analog signals (not HMDI). Doh.

I wonder if this is a good enough rationale for a new TV. Probably not. Oh well...

Re: 720p overscan issue with Panasonic TV.

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2012 7:38 pm
by Jason181
Try resetting your tv to all defaults. I have a Panasonic tv as well, and for some reason it started overscanning a lot over time. Resetting factory defaults fixed it immediately. Hope it helps you out!

Jason