OK, heres the deal. I bought a 32 inch widescreen HD TV for my XBox 360 last year (as in 2005). Look it up online (Since I can't post links), the model number is 30PW9100D. At the Philipps site when you type in the model you can see the manual and all that if it helps.


Anyways, like most people, or say most people say, I have the edge of the screen cut off! I have heard various comments from its the 360 to its the TV. So far it only does it on the 360. I tried various settings but the TV doesn't has alot to pick from and neither does the 360. Someone did mention something called "overscan" but thats not an option on my tv.

I don't want to hear "Your tv sucks". Its the only time I have been able to purchase something expensive. Its the best I can do.

So how do you fix this problem?

When you say "Cut off" do you mean there are black bars on the sides or that the image is in widescreen but extends beyond the edges of the screen?

My bad, the picture is is to wide I gues you could say. I am missing about an inch or two on each side. So any important info in game isn't visible.

And changing the format of the screen doesn't help, just in case someone mentions it. :)

Make sure the Xbox 360 is set to output a 16:9 widescreen image. The TV should not have to be set on any stretch or zoom mode.

Yea, it sounds like something else in the TV's menu. Sometimes there is a zoom/crop option, which will zoom in ~10% of the image.

Yeah its none of those, I get tv stuff. Its all normal.

But I did find out what it is. Although I the way to fix it is crap. Basically on the Xbox 360 there is a display menu which cahnges how the 360 displays itself, its resolution. Right now I have it at 1080i. In 1080i it cuts off the edges, if I put it at 720P it still has it cutt off the same amount. However if I put it at 480P it doesn't cut it off and everything is normal!

So the question is now that I figured out how to get it back is it the 360 that Microsoft needs to fix or is still something with the TV?

And in case you don't get how the 360 works having it at 1080i makes the games look better, so having it at 480P makes them look, not horrible, but not as good as they could be.

If your Xbox 360 is set-up properly then the problem is with the TV. That is some pretty excessive overscan if your estimates (1-2" on each side) are correct.

This isn't something the average person can fix. You'll have to have a tech calibrate your display. If you are feeling adventurous you might try to fix it yourself using the TV's service menu. Be warned though that doing so may void your warranty and could seriously screw up your set if you don't know what you're doing.

I'd be willing to do it myself is someone could tell me how to get into that menu. If its something I access via the control I can't find it on there. I am tech savy (at least until the really advanced stuff) and tried the buttons that would make sense and couldn't find any way to get into any other menus besides the MENU button itself.

HEY..... I figured it out 100% this time. I had totaly missed something when I was going through the sections on my XBOX 360:

Well, on your 360 you have 3 settings (ignoring 1080P since most can't use it) under your DISPLAY settings menu:
480P
720P
1080i

Ok, for me on either 1080i or 720P my screen would be cut off on all sides, I just noticed the tops, most people don't notice the tops are top and bottom are cut off too. Well when I turned the setting to "480P" I gained the sides and top and bottom back!

BUT, heres where it got interesting.

When I exited that screen I seen a option called "Screen Format", this option was NOT avaliable under the other settings. It let me choose "Normal" or "Widescreen". Currently it was set at "Normal". At "Normal" I got to see everything, when I set it to "Widescreen" the screen got to big and cut off everything!

So I went to 720P and 1080i and guess what? The "Screen Format" option isn't avaliable to select, you are forced into "Widescreen", which gives you the wider screen then your current tv screen and cuts everything off!

So MS is at fault because didn't set up the options right!

Oh and Normal still fits in your widescreen, a matter of fact IT IS WIDESCREEN! But it doesn't stretch it past your tvs screen!
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thetruegamerguru - Makes great offers & doesn't pay up! Maybe he should be "TheTrueGrinchGuru"!

Sorry to make a third reply but thought it would be helpful. I searched for my TV so someone online could look at the specs but happen to misspell something and came up with interesting results which led me to find out it isn't MS's fault. Well not really.

it turns out alot of tvs have an Overscan problem. You have to have someone come to your house and adjust it. Although that doesn't make much sense to me, if my normal picture is fine on tv wouldn't shrinking my picture on my game shrink my tvs picture?

I'd be willing to do it myself is someone could tell me how to get into that menu. If its something I access via the control I can't find it on there. I am tech savy (at least until the really advanced stuff) and tried the buttons that would make sense and couldn't find any way to get into any other menus besides the MENU button itself.

It's not simple to access. You have to enter a special code to get in which they only tell their service techs. You can probably find it online somewhere.

So MS is at fault because didn't set up the options right!

Nope, the standard for the HD formats is widescreen so there's no reason to give an option for having a wide screen set.

Since the image fills your screen properly under "normal" and cuts off a great deal under "widescreen" my opinion is that you have enabled a zoom setting on your TV. If you hadn't you would have seen black bars on the sides when playing in "normal."

it turns out alot of tvs have an Overscan problem. You have to have someone come to your house and adjust it. Although that doesn't make much sense to me, if my normal picture is fine on tv wouldn't shrinking my picture on my game shrink my tvs picture?

All CRT tvs have overscan to some degree. If they didn't use it you'd bring your TV home to find you have a black bar on one side or the other from things getting jostled during shipping.

Yes it will shrink the picture when viewing TV as well but overscan isn't source specific. If it is truely overscan than it is occuring on all your viewing not just with the Xbox.

Its not a problem with any of the TVs its the 360 itself. I've been on many a 360 forum and all have the problem. Seems only 480 works properly.

Maybe this will be fixed in the spring 360 dashboard update? :confused:

Your television maybe has overscan issue with HD material? I had a pioneer widescreen television that displayed normal 480i perfectly, but the second HD material was introduced it overscanned the image and cut off 5-10 percent of it. Not sure if it's an Xbox thing, but the only fix was to acess the secret settings in the tv (which is not recommended unless you're very patient and detail-oriented), which I tried briefly until it drove me insane. Then I bought a projector with no overscan and that problem is forever solved.