How to Disable overscan on a Samsung "SMART" tv - solved

[Sol]

So maybe this should be elsewhere since I've already solved it but it was such a pain in the arse I thought it deserved to be somewhere if only to shorten some other poor bastards search by a day or so...

On Saturday I went out and bought a shiny new 40" Samsung D7000 TV. (I should have bought a 46" but I was replacing a 40 and didn't realize how much of the old one was bezel... In any case I got it home and all was well (Once I'd figured out how to disable the infernal 800Hz interpolation crap that makes everything look like a soap opera) until I plugged in my PC and discovered 5% of the screen was missing around the edges (an the other 95% stretched and looking like crap.

So after checking that this wasn't covered in the manual I called Samsung, and then the shop I got the TV from, and searched online and today called Samsung again. All to no avail (Other than having a much clearer idea of what didn't work and why it probably didn't work).

In the end it turns out the solution was exactly what all the forums said, you need to plug the PC in to the HDMI port labeled DVI and then change the name of that port to PC/DVI. The secret sauce, of course, was to figure out how the hell to do that. Select HDMI1 in the sources list and hit the info button and then you get a menu which lets you give sources names. Yay for inscrutable, undocumented, procedures which the support staff don't know anything about. (Even knowing I probably had to rename the source they couldn't tell me how to do that).

 

[MaxBurn]

Good stuff, many sets seem to work that way.

Also on the video card side they can hide automatic overscan deep in the display drivers which kick in automatically when a TV is detected. Really have to look in both places.

Doing the above for most TV disables a lot of the picture and signal processing and generally reduces lag. Even if you aren't a gamer it is annoying that the cursor is a little behind.

 

[blakerwry]

Why oh why is there even overscan on digital devices? whoever carried this bastard technology over to digital sources needs to be shot.

 

[Sol]

Why oh why is there even overscan on digital devices? whoever carried this bastard technology over to digital sources needs to be shot.

Whilst I agree generally that it shouldn't ever be needed I can sort of see that TV manufacturers would get a lot of complaints if they didn't have it on broadcast TV, and blaming the stations wouldn't really help much (despite it clearly being their fault). I really don't get overscan on a HDMI connection at all though... A digital source which includes junk at the edges of the picture is just flat out faulty and catering for that should absolutely not be the default behavior.

It's especially problematic on a screen which supports 3d as a major feature. Of the 6 or 8 3D modes supported by the TV at most 2 function well enough to use when the image is scaled. (Only one of which my video card supports and that less than ideally).

 

[SnEAky]

So maybe this should be elsewhere since I've already solved it but it was such a pain in the arse I thought it deserved to be somewhere if only to shorten some other poor bastards search by a day or so...

On Saturday I went out and bought a shiny new 40" Samsung D7000 TV. (I should have bought a 46" but I was replacing a 40 and didn't realize how much of the old one was bezel... In any case I got it home and all was well (Once I'd figured out how to disable the infernal 800Hz interpolation crap that makes everything look like a soap opera) until I plugged in my PC and discovered 5% of the screen was missing around the edges (an the other 95% stretched and looking like crap.

So after checking that this wasn't covered in the manual I called Samsung, and then the shop I got the TV from, and searched online and today called Samsung again. All to no avail (Other than having a much clearer idea of what didn't work and why it probably didn't work).

In the end it turns out the solution was exactly what all the forums said, you need to plug the PC in to the HDMI port labeled DVI and then change the name of that port to PC/DVI. The secret sauce, of course, was to figure out how the hell to do that. Select HDMI1 in the sources list and hit the info button and then you get a menu which lets you give sources names. Yay for inscrutable, undocumented, procedures which the support staff don't know anything about. (Even knowing I probably had to rename the source they couldn't tell me how to do that).

Sorry to bump this topic. But I would like to give you kudo's.

After an update of my 46" D7000, I was also missing a small % of the screen.
Today I was talking to customer support, but in the end they were blaming my cable or an mechanic had to come by. I even ended up making my TV factory new.

Thanks to the solution in this topic, it solved my problems. Thanks a lot!

Just one thing, as it is 2 years later, pressing source -> Info won't do the trick. Source -> Tools, does!

Kind regards,

SnEAky

 

[panserbj0rn]

Thank you!

So maybe this should be elsewhere since I've already solved it but it was such a pain in the arse I thought it deserved to be somewhere if only to shorten some other poor bastards search by a day or so...

On Saturday I went out and bought a shiny new 40" Samsung D7000 TV. (I should have bought a 46" but I was replacing a 40 and didn't realize how much of the old one was bezel... In any case I got it home and all was well (Once I'd figured out how to disable the infernal 800Hz interpolation crap that makes everything look like a soap opera) until I plugged in my PC and discovered 5% of the screen was missing around the edges (an the other 95% stretched and looking like crap.

So after checking that this wasn't covered in the manual I called Samsung, and then the shop I got the TV from, and searched online and today called Samsung again. All to no avail (Other than having a much clearer idea of what didn't work and why it probably didn't work).

In the end it turns out the solution was exactly what all the forums said, you need to plug the PC in to the HDMI port labeled DVI and then change the name of that port to PC/DVI. The secret sauce, of course, was to figure out how the hell to do that. Select HDMI1 in the sources list and hit the info button and then you get a menu which lets you give sources names. Yay for inscrutable, undocumented, procedures which the support staff don't know anything about. (Even knowing I probably had to rename the source they couldn't tell me how to do that).

I registered on this forum just to say thank you. Luckily I found your post pretty fast, after only about 20 minutes of struggling. But man, could it have been a much longer time! I am glad the search phrase "Samsung Smart TV Overscan" came into my mind.
One thing that was different for me though is that I was not able to change the name of the port by pressing the Info button. What worked for me was Source -> Tools -> and then select Edit name.
Again, thank you sooo much for posting this!

Respectfully,
Andrew

 

[[KitFox]]

OMG Thank you!!!

I also registered to this forum only to say tank you!

I just bought a 55" 8000 serie and was about to send it back.

This is really incredible that they do not even explain this incredibly important detail.

Thanks thanks thanks thanks!!!

 

[[KitFox]]

Oh one more think.

Oh and like Sneaky said.

Source -> Tools -> and then select Edit name for the Samsung 8000 serie too.

 

[SYZekrom]

Made My Screen Even Smaller!

I have a 55" Samsung Smart TV, and the PC is connected with HDMI on both ends. When I changed the plug to the HDMI/DVI port and set the name to PC, the screen actually got even smaller. Why the heck?

 

[sedrosken]

Smaller as in it's no longer scaling the resolution to the entire TV? Is there a black border?

 

[mh9]

thanks again!

Yet another year has passed and this post is still useful!

For my samsung UN65F6350AF, it didn't need to be the HDMI4 port which is labeled as DVI. I was able to rename my HDMI1 input to DVI PC. As soon as I clicked OK, the overscan ticked off and I had the full resolution of the PC to use. No more scaling! Cool!

Now if somebody could tell me how to turn off the darn info screen that is displayed every time the display mode changes? I would be even happier. Actually, that is what I was looking for when I stumbled upon this thread.

 

[Testudo52]

A Thanks to SOL from 2016 for getting my Samsung TV to work correctly as a monitor.

So maybe this should be elsewhere since I've already solved it but it was such a pain in the arse I thought it deserved to be somewhere if only to shorten some other poor bastards search by a day or so...

On Saturday I went out and bought a shiny new 40" Samsung D7000 TV. (I should have bought a 46" but I was replacing a 40 and didn't realize how much of the old one was bezel... In any case I got it home and all was well (Once I'd figured out how to disable the infernal 800Hz interpolation crap that makes everything look like a soap opera) until I plugged in my PC and discovered 5% of the screen was missing around the edges (an the other 95% stretched and looking like crap.

So after checking that this wasn't covered in the manual I called Samsung, and then the shop I got the TV from, and searched online and today called Samsung again. All to no avail (Other than having a much clearer idea of what didn't work and why it probably didn't work).

In the end it turns out the solution was exactly what all the forums said, you need to plug the PC in to the HDMI port labeled DVI and then change the name of that port to PC/DVI. The secret sauce, of course, was to figure out how the hell to do that. Select HDMI1 in the sources list and hit the info button and then you get a menu which lets you give sources names. Yay for inscrutable, undocumented, procedures which the support staff don't know anything about. (Even knowing I probably had to rename the source they couldn't tell me how to do that).

14 years later this post has really saved me. It's December 12, 2016 and I have spent 3 hours running in circles after buying a new Samsung 32" Smart HD TV. I thought I may have to settle for letting my NVIDIA card (NVS 3100m) just scale the graphics to fit to the screen, or have the Samsung TV "Scale to Fit". If you do this the text in so many applications looks terrible. After reading 10 or 20 solutions, I was exactly where Sol had been: I knew it was an overscan problem, and I knew the TV needed to change to make this happen, but how? As Sol suggested, I went to Source using my TV remote. When the sources appeared a text on the screen said press and hold Enter to bring up Options. I held the Select/Enter on the remote down and I was given an option to "Edit Name". There was the magic menu with a list of names from which to select. Among them was "DVI PC". I am so grateful to Sol that I joined this forum just to make this post. If you are still out there somewhere Sol, THANKS!

 

[lordkonst]

Just created an account to say thanks also. This was the 3rd samsung tv monitor I got my hands on and I really did not want to give on it and have its user get signal over vga.

F@@@ yeah !

 

[Jim FItzSimmons]

Sol, many thanks. I recently bought a PC for the kids for Christmas and had this problem with my Samsung Smart TV and have been all over the set-up menus without success - the taskbar was clipped off the screen and the text looked awful. Thanks to your directions, it now looks perfect. Cheers!

ps. Like several other posters on this thread, I joined this forum purely to thank you.

 

[VoltVisionFrenchy]

Hello! I also joined this forum just to say thank you! Today is Dec19, 2016...over 5 years after the original post and I had the same problem and the above fix worked!! In my case it fixed 2 different problems at once. Problem1 was the overscan being off the screen...and problem2 was that the computer text looked TERRIBLE on the TV!!! I had wasted time going through some Win10 based "true type text tuning" or some such that did nothing. On this Samsung UN32J5205 "Smart TV", I ended up going into:
"Source" -> LongPressEnter for Options ->EditName -> Change to PC

...then suddenly all of the problems were gone!!! This is extremely counter-intuitive because usually "Editing a Name" is mostly cosmetic only doesnt change internal settings like this...but it did. Shame on Samsung for making this so counter-intuitive!!

Thx again!!
frenchy (Steve French)

 

[davideo3]

Re underscan setup

After selecting HDMI1 source on Samsung TV, I hit the tool button on remote and scrolled down the menu and selected DVIPC.
Now in underscan mode.
Thanks

 

[ShiftedPhase]

What worked for me was to adjust the setting Picture => Picture Size => Screen Fit (which is supposed to be Samsung's 1:1 mode)

 

[vuplus]

Hello.
It's now late November 2018 and I too have registered to thank Sol and to add a bit of info.
When I changed the name to DVI PC I lost sound. Changing to PC cured that but I had a sparkly border around the picture if Screen Fit was used, so I used 16:9.
I am currently fighting with a Vu+ Solo2 machine but I'm sure I'll get there eventually.
Why is this all so myterious, hit and miss and difficult?
Good luck all, we need it!

 

[Jcochr]

Install a graphics control panel such as "Intel Graphics Command Panel" and adjust the scaling to make it fit. The Beta version is necessary to get a Surface pro to fit on a Samsung HD television but the older Intel Graphics Control panel on a Dell was able to do the same by centering the screen, for example.

 

[Melissa60515]

I'm using an old 32" Samsung 3D HDTV as a monitor for work - simply due to size.
The remote was of no use to me. I used the buttons on the side of the TV.
My fix: Picture => Picture Size => Screen Fit

 

[cinnabar]

Hello! I also joined this forum just to say thank you! Today is Dec19, 2016...over 5 years after the original post and I had the same problem and the above fix worked!! In my case it fixed 2 different problems at once. Problem1 was the overscan being off the screen...and problem2 was that the computer text looked TERRIBLE on the TV!!! I had wasted time going through some Win10 based "true type text tuning" or some such that did nothing. On this Samsung UN32J5205 "Smart TV", I ended up going into:
"Source" -> LongPressEnter for Options ->EditName -> Change to PC

...then suddenly all of the problems were gone!!! This is extremely counter-intuitive because usually "Editing a Name" is mostly cosmetic only doesnt change internal settings like this...but it did. Shame on Samsung for making this so counter-intuitive!!

Thx again!!
frenchy (Steve French)

I will continue this practice of registering just to say "thank you" for this solution, in March, 2022, 11 years after the original post.

I bought a new Mac mini a few days ago, and hooked it up to my big Samsung TV, only to find the borders of my windows were clipped such that the header menu (if that's the right name for it) did not show. Hell, I didn't really know what "overscan" and "underscan" were. I'm not a techie. I went into my Mac's display preferences, and remembered that I'd clicked on the overscan slider bar with my previous mini to temporarily fix the same problem. But the slider bar was missing in the new mini's display preferences window.

So I searched the Mac help files, the Apple website, and the Samsung website, to no avail. Via Google, I eventually found this forum. Thank the gods. Based on the advice here, I went into my TV's source settings, renamed my HDMI source "PC", and that fixed the overscan problem. Only now, my screen colors were all washed out. I went into my TV's menu --> Picture --> Brightness, and turned the brightness down from 100% to 33%. My colors were then nicely saturated.

Now, I can use my smart new $1,100 computer. It wasn't smart enough to select the right resolution for the TV, but whatever. User friendly? Not hardly. But with your help, I'm whole again. Thanks.

 

[Dartis]

first, i hate overscan.
second, i have always been able to disable it on every device - and do so for everyone i perform "tech support" for (my hobby). and those ive done it for have thanked me as they never even knew about it
third, my free, second hand, 6 year old samsung tv refused to disable overscan in the settings and i was completely lost
fourth, thank you my new friend - all the way from april 2022!

 

[WestfW]

Wow. Picked up a free 2009-vintage Samsung 32inch TV to use as a monitor, and this STILL works great.
In my case (model LN32B550k1fxza), the "magic name" for the HDMI channel was "PC." Not only did it fix the overscan problem, but also some weird color shift of black text. THANKS!