To free up some monitors with DVI ports for our Dell-using developers at Headspring, I was recently upgraded to a pair of ViewSonic VX2453mh monitors. Overall, I’m very impressed with these screens: the colors are vibrant, the response times are excellent, and the input ports are conveniently-located. However, after hooking them up to my MacBook Pro, I almost immediately noticed a chunk of my screen was missing around the edges, a problem known as overscan (and similar to one about which I blogged in April). Overscan also tends to stretch the screen image, causing things to appear a bit fuzzy.

As it happens, these monitors default to a display mode that has a considerable amount of overscan, apparently for the purpose of working with non-computer A/V inputs. In my case, however, video comes straight from the DisplayPorts on my Mac, so I want to display “1080p” as a full 1920x1080 resolution.

Fortunately, correcting this issue is very straightforward:

1. Open the “on-screen display” (OSD) of the monitor you’d like to correct by pressing the “1” button on the side of the monitor.
2. Select the “Input Select” option with the “2” button.
3. Use the up/down buttons to select “PC” next to either “HDMI1” or “HDMI2”, depending on which input you’re using. In this screen, “AV” is the “overscan” mode we’d like to avoid.
4. Press “2” again to select this mode. The screen will blink briefly while the change takes effect…and you’re done!

Though I’ve used this method on a VX2453mh specifically, I imagine it applies to other monitors of the same family, as well. If you’ve succeeded—or failed!—on another ViewSonic monitor, let me know in the comments!