Even using HDMI cables, on a plasma 1080p TV, I get some content outside the "safe zone".

Most PS3 games allow the user to define the screen borders that will be used by the game played. I had spent hours looking for that in FFXIV to no avail. Then, I just moved the stuff that I could, and said 'forget it' about the rest. Hopefully this gets resolved, as losing as much as you are saying is actually an issue. My loss was of the order of 1-3% of total area, in about a 5 square border around my screen.