If your television supports it:
Do you have overscan turned on or off?

This made me think after reading this thread http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1987443

I have it set to ON (it's called '16:9 Overscan' on my Panasonic TV)

Would prefer to have it set to OFF, but when it is, there is 'noise' generated on the edge of the screen on certain channels.

It only zooms in a fraction and doesn't change the aspect ratio, so I can live with that.

yes always.
but on samsungs it's usually called "just scan" or "screen fit"

Yes, but on some of the very low bitrate and low resolution, poor quality channels expect to see some edge effects. I once turned off overscan for a friend that tended to watch some of the appalling quality Sky lesser offerings. I had to turn on overscan, amazingly they did not care about the terrible blurred images, just the few pixels on the edge of the screen that were not part of the transmission. I rather think it depends on how your TV scaler works with crap source content.

Overscan I always switch off I checked with Spears & Munsil to set up my TV the overscan on my LG can cut off an unacceptable amount of screen with videogames.

This is selectable now? Why I wonder?

Choice

I always have Overscan set to Off

Always set any enhancement to off on my Sony TV. Plus when I buy a new TV, the first thing I do is turn the contrast down so it doesn't burn my eyeballs.

With overscan enabled on an HD source, you're obviously not getting the full/true 1:1 HD picture - cropped and zoomed in.

I just realised though I do set it to Off if I look very closely I can see picture noise and smudgy stuff at the edge of the screen, turning it on could fix this..?

Yes, that's why it's the default

Why don't you turn it on and see

Broadcasters, and most film companies, expect you to use overscan, everything is framed with that in mind but it's a free country, switch it off if you want to but you will see oddities at times.
Feature films are also shot with a safe area because of the variable nature of screen masking in many theatres, as well as the necessity of TV compatibility. (They make far more money from TV and BD/DVD than they do in the cinema).

Overscan is fine on SD channels but on HD ones it's far better to have it switched off. And especially if you mostly always watch HD channels it's a no-brainer. You get a 1:1 pixel mapping on HD channels then. Otherwise with the image zoomed in you are losing some quality where the pixels don't quite match up. Broadcasters always broadcast HD channels in full resolution that matches the screen resolution. Personally as 95% of my viewing is on HD channels I would rather have the out of picture scan lines displayed on the 5% SD than lose some quality on my HD.

Except you can't see any difference in picture quality

The only reason you know overscan is turned OFF is because you can see out of picture lines.

are you saying that in general or to just that poster?
i can always tell if overscan is on or off, as the DOGs are much tighter against the edge when overscan is on.

This is true on most TVs, and it's quite surprising. While on PC monitors, things are visibly inferior when you move away from 1:1 pixel mapping, on most TVs there's no similar drop in quality when you switch overscan back on.

It's either amazing scaling, or even with overscan off they're doing a heck of a lot of picture processing which destroys the 1:1 pixel goodness, or TV pictures are never sharp enough to reveal the difference (though I've tried it with test patterns and sometimes there's still no real difference!).

FWIW I have it switched off, because I find normal framing of scenes (which is designed with overscan in mind) to be a little too cropped. I find, artistically(!), that most programmes look a little better that little more more "zoomed out". It's not what the camera operator intended, but I'm watching it, not them!

Cheers,
David.