Television problem: Image too large for screen

Factual Questions
1

I have a problem with my year-old TV: the image is too large for the screen. The edges are cut off, which is a problem because important text (news tickers, program information, captions) tends to be near the edge of the screen, and now I’m only seeing half of it. This would be an easy problem to fix on a monitor, but TVs don’t have size or position settings, so it looks like I’m stuck with reading the top half of the ticker…

Might anyone know what causes this problem, or how it could be fixed? I did a Google search but couldn’t seem to find anything. It’s a 27" CRT, made by Apex (in China), about a year old. One possible factor is that I’ve left the TV itself on all the time. Rather than turning it off, I turn off the converter so the CRT is on but displays a black screen.

2

It’s called overscanning. The picture is deliberately broadcast slightly larger than will fit on a standard TV to be sure the entire screen is covered.

A TV-tech type should be able to adjust this.

3

Glossary of video terminology

4

It’s possible that your TV has a special service menu that’s accessible through your remote that lets you change the parameters you need. Problem is, most of these codes are only available to service technicians. We had a similar problem with our Samsung HDTV, and called the company which sent the TV fix-it man over. He pressed a special combo on the remote, got the technician’s menu, and voila, secret menu for all sorts of fun screen parameters. (Later, he passed the wisdom on to us.)

I would give the company a call and see what they can do.