[mythtv-users] HDMI keep alive, maybe via sending silent audio?

[Simon Hobson]

Mike Perkins <mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk> wrote:

> I still have no idea why digital TVs have overscan anyway, ...

My take on it is this ...
When the digital standard were being developed, CRTs still rules the game, and they "aren't pretty" with no overscan. So it made sense to carry on the tradition of sending a picture a bit bigger than needed so some of it can be cut off for clean edges.
In hindsight, it would have made sense for display devices to indicate not just their resolutions, but also their characteristics - and allowed for the source to send "more pixels" to devices suiting overscan.

I imagine I'm far from alone in seeing the complete lunacy of generating a nice crisp 1080 line image, only for the display device to degrade it by chopping 1/3 of it off and resampling (upscale) the remaining part. Mind you, in a world where people think a 1366x768 TV with only DVB-T tuner is "HD" thanks to marketing lies .....

SWMBO is quite happy with the quality of her old VHS cassettes !