Feel up the Boob Tube

Being a big fan of fansubbed anime torrents, I have to put up with some god-awful typesetting, ass-ugly typefaces, and wost of all, a lack of understanding of video/tv production techniques. While I can decipher yucky script fonts and tolerate bad fake perspective compositing, when the fansubbed subtitles get cut off at the bottom of the screen I am left with no option but to watch on my computer. That is not why I bought my TV. But in all fairness it can't all be blamed on the hard-working fansubbers. I think my TV needs to see the doctor for a case of excessive overscan. Overscan is when tv manufacturers expand the screen image waaaaay past the edge of the visible portion of the tv to compensate for the vast array of video signals the set may need to display. Someone who bought a $2000 set is not gonna be happy if they get video artifacts such as white bars, static remnants, etc on the border of their screen - so many tv makers set the overscan excessively high. There is a way to fix this - if you are brave enough to risk screwing up your TV. Many sets have a 'service menu' that is accessible through a secret power-on button combo. In this menu you can change all sorts of crazy parameters such as geometry, color, etc. But this ain't like your computer monitor's setup menu - one wrong setting and you can render your television useless. Tempting, but dangerous. To calibrate all this stuff properly, check out these DVDs with test patterns, color tests, etc. (The Avia one can be found as a torrent.)