HDPVR or Directv "gap" Problem

[Evil_Attorney]

Last month I upgraded to two HDPVRs and two new Directv HD tuners. Additionally, I have been using an HDHR for over a year.

The HDPVR's picture do not fill the entire screen. There is a small black gap (about 1" on my 52" TV) across the top of the screen. The HDHR picture does not have this gap.

So, is the HDPVR causing this or Directv? Any ideas how to fix this? I know I can adjust/zoom in Sage, but I'd rather not since this would be cutting off some of the picture for HDHR sources.

[Beefcake550]

evil_attorney.....that seems redundant j/k

anyhow, I have the same issue and have found it is DirecTV doing it. They way I came to this conclusion is I had the DirecTV box hooked up to the TV directly and still saw the gap if I had my TV in "just scan" mode. That means no built in overscan on my Samsung A650. Also, if you leave sage alone and then go behind it's back to change the channel on the direcTV remote, you should notice that the blue banner that DirecTV puts up does fill the whole screen (at least on the top).

I've also noticed that some shows have larger/smaller gaps than others. YMMV

Good news is you can solve this in two ways.
1) If using a client PC, I found that setting the overscan adjustment to 104% in both directions eliminated any gap and produces the least amount of overscan. Again, YMMV. Sicne this is an analog signal, you probably aren't concerned with pixel-perfect output.

2) If using the extenders, I think you can do the same, but I just set my TV to 16:9 mode which introduces a little overscan, but the bars go away. I then adjust the DirecTV and HD200 settings so that the GUI never goes off the viewable screen.

Hope this helps, but the quick answer is that it is DirecTV, not HDPVR.

[Evil_Attorney]

Thanks for the confirmation of that. Last night I noticed the blue banner too. Crazy Directv. I guess I settle for the 104% magnification. Do the Directv boxes show this gap when hooked directly up to a TV or do all tvs automatically zoom in a little?

[Beefcake550]

Most TVs make some of the 1920x1080 resolution outside of the viewable area of the screen. Only recent sets have an equivalent of "just scan" where all 1920x1080 pixels are within the viewable area. It's not really DirecTVs fault when it comes to SDTV, but for HDTV channels, there is no excuse.

-Brian