I think there is a range of amounts of overscan just like with conventional CRT TV sets. For example, according to the Video Essentials DVD going into the component inputs, I see my Vizio 37" LCD HDTV has 2.5% overscan at left & right, 1% at bottom, 4% at top edge. So it shows a little bit more of the image than my CRT which has about 5% overscan at each edge.

The Vizio also has a RGB input (15-pin VGA connector) and there is no overscan at all on that input, and of course, if the DVD gets played on a computer there will be no overscan area.

I've concluded that overscan can be anywhere from 0% (PC viewing) to 10% (older NTSC sets). I think it would be dangerous to assume that overscan would cover up any junk at the edges. My suggestion would be to put a black border on your finished project. A 2 or 3% border won't even be noticed on most display devices and keeps the edge clean on those that don't overscan at all.

My Mitsubishi 62" DLP set has about 7% overscan, by the way. I wish there were a way to adjust this, but I haven't found it yet.

Very good advice!
Take a 4:3 DVD and play it on a 16:9 setup, even with a CRT you get to see all of the horizontal edges of the frame. Paly a 16:9 DVD on a 4:3 setup and you get to see all of the vertical edges of the frame, including any of the lines oftenly used for CC data etc.
Quite apart from the vignetting you should always check for anything anywhere in the frame with the monitor in underscan or else the Vegas monitor so that you can see every damn pixel.

Bob.

I read a technical paper some months ago, and made a comment on this forum about it. The paper was to this effect:

No matter the brand or quality level, Plasma, LCD, CRT, etc. TV or Monitor, they ALL have an overscan. However, the Plasma, LCD, digital generation of TVs and Monitors do it a little differently from the older CRT.

Take a 1920 x 1080 capable LCD (or Plasma, anything digital), and send it a perfect 1920 by 1080 image. The first thing they ALL do is overscan, which leaves something LESS than 1920 x 1080 on the visible area, which is a true 1920 x 1080. The units then have devices of varying quality which then modifies this LESS than 1920 x 1080 image and interpolates it up to fill the full 1920 x 1080. This is exactly the same thing for 720 with its overscan, and 480, likewise.

In other words, the TV magazine which presented this technical article, says that there is no known digital TV or Monitor that takes a 1920 x 1080 signal and presents it on a device capable of 1920 x 1080 without HAVING to interpolate it upward.

Weird, and STUPID! Both their conclusion and mine!

I recently purchased the New Zealand equivalent of the Sony KDL-46XBR2 1080p LCD TV. Thanks to JJ Kizak for your input . I am most pleased with the performance especially off my Playstation 3 playing HD content from Vegas. This is an ideal interim solution for showing my own HD content albeit limited to 20mins on a DVD-R. You don't really need to author or create a menu as Playstation provides this by default.
This TV has more user adjustments than you can point a stick at and those who bag LCD performance really should see a properly adjusted set as opposed to the display models in stores running in Vivid mode off an HD source. In spite of in store testing with my own sources I never appreciated what it was capable of until I got it home and was able to experiment at leisure. There is also bags of advice over at AVS forum.
Regarding overscan I discovered a setting under display size called Full Pixel. This appears to be a zero overscan mode.
Off my HDR-HC1E in component you can just see the sides of the picture and the image is noticeably sharper than Normal (overscan) mode. 1080 50i material from Vegas played on the Playstation 3 via HDMI shows a similarly enlarged picture area and increased clarity but no visible edges. This suggests to me that the Full Pixel mode is truly native 1080 without overscan and hence no interpolation of scan lines. This would make it ideal for monitoring use if somewhat large. I don't know if other brands or models have this feature.
I now use this as my default setting on the Playstation input for maximum viewing area without visible edges and best clarity.
I thoroughly recommend the Playstation as a playing device for HDV files until the dust settles on the Blue Ray-HDDVD format war.
Althogh it appears to support Blue Ray it is a very workable interim solution using existing media. It does seem to be file name extension sensitive. .m2t for HD files and .mpg for SD files.

The Full Pixel option in the menu only works on tv stations transmitting 1080i and is greyed out on the 720p stations. The 1080i looks fine but when they switch to SD you see the top of the picture squiggly line about a 1/2" thick. There is no perceptable quality difference in the 1080i signal when switching back & forth. It is about a 2.5% change in picture size. The Full Pixel option can be separately applied to each of the 9 inputs so in the DVD position it can be on all the time. I assume the squiggly line on top the SD picture is a data bar.
JJK