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I posted the following on another forum yesterday, but didn't get much of any feedback. Let me see if you folks here have any input on this: I'm a Comcast subscriber in San Francisco. Last night, I noticed that a thin green stipe showed up along the entire right edge of the picture on all HD...

That does make sense. (I forgot to mention that I use an interlaced signal coming from the DVD.) I'll try it out as soon as possible. Thank you very much.

I recently bought a Sony KP-57WS510 CRT RPTV. It has a feature called "Auto Wide" that selects the aspect ratio automatically based on the input signal (at least with DVDs). I was able to see this feature in action when watching a DVD once, but at one point I was forced to override the aspect...

There are a few things that are confusing about your description.

Reggie, I think what you're talking about is how the very first scan and very last lines in the letterboxed display area flicker on an off as the movie is playing. (Otherwise, the black bars are pure black. What else about them could be "shaking", right?) If I'm right about my assumption that...

Dave, Quick note: Dolby Digital wasn't introduced to laserdiscs before 1995. So it would have been true clairvoyance if the manual of your 1992 laserdisc player mentioned anything about Dolby Digital at all... :)

Sean,

Allan, Thanks for the response. It sounds more or less like what I expected... Any others with an opinion about this?

Steve, To add a little to Allan's answer... The subtitles on a DVD are not part of the original video image that is recorded on the disk. (Otherwise you wouldn't have been able to turn them off or switch languages.) They are added by the player to the outgoing video signal at playback time...

This sounds very much like a compatibility problem. Some DVDs may have digital errors in the mastering or software incompatibilities with the DVD spec that causes problems with some players but not with others. Conversely, some players may have bugs in their firmware (i.e., the software that...

Perhaps you're only asking this because it's difficult to reach the back of your parents' set, but if it isn't, it's a simple matter to tell the two apart just by the appearance of the jack itself. A BNC jack typically looks like the following: BNC example (The one on the left.) An RCA jack...

I will be finally (I hope) switching to a rear-projection TV shortly, after years of watching only direct-view sets. There is however one primary concern in my mind about RPTVs: Hotspotting... By this I mean, of course, the way a "band of brightness" seems to sit in the middle of the picture...

Jerry,

I think your dad is right. The output watts is measured in the same electrical manner as the way the receiver's power consumption watts are measured. Since the receiver can't be creating energy out of nothing (kind of goes against the laws of the universe...), what comes out must have gone in at...

Sorry, I didn't know about model-specific peculiarities. I was talking with the behavior of the typical receiver in mind.

Martin, Two subwoofers placed in a room will, of course, interact. As an experiment, anyone can try putting two subwoofers side by side, with the phase of one inverted in relation to the other, and watch how virtually no low bass is produced due to the cancellation effect. Of course, that's an...

Rich, First, to answer your questions directly...

Marc, I don't know where the "18% gray" requirement comes from, but something about it doesn't sound right to me. What matters about the wall behind the display is what shade and brightness it appears to you. The NTSC spec similarly states that the surface behind the display should appear as...

Aaron,

Craig,

Obviously what you need is to switch one of the two receivers to a different remote ID (or "code", or "channel"). This may or may not be possible. (The vast majority of equipment do not have this capability.) Notice that switching the "ID" of a piece of equipment would also require that you...

EDTV stands for "Enhanced Definition Television". It is not a different video format or signal standard. I might call it a "feature designation". When a TV is capable of receiving all high-definition signals but can only display up to 480p (downconverting the higher ones to this), it is supposed...

Jim, I'm a little suprised that most sound content came only from the main speakers. Do you include the center speaker in the definition of the "main" speakers? If not, it's really odd that the sound would come primarily out of the left and right channels, but not the center or the surrounds...

Don, Thank you for the corrections. And I'm relieved that I was wrong about early cheap progressive players using a regular built-in line doubler. Those are valuable insights.

You may be confused about some terminology details and technicalities. You say that "5.1 sound" works on Showtime, The Movie Channel, and all digital channels. If, by this, you mean that your receiver receives and decodes a 5.1-channel digital soundtrack for these channels, I can image that...

I'm not familiar with that particular model and the technique it uses, but I'm willing to venture a few guesses. This reminds me of some stereo systems that I remember from more than a decade ago that had (seemingly) similar "wide" or "surround" modes. Usually what they did involved inverting...

Hmmm... If I had to choose the lesser of two evils, I think I would still choose the "higher big screen" over the "smaller offset screen". At least, the higher big screen comes with the additional perk of the bigger image size (even if it is at the expense of a lighter wallet...). Besides, the...

The answer to your question is here: http://www.toshiba.com/tacp/dvd/dvd_FAQ.html#9 (Look at the answer to "Question 9".) And further technical details on the topic can be found here: http://www.avguide.com/how_to/video_insights.html

No offense, but watching digital cable through a coaxial hookup is a bit like driving your Ferrari exclusively on dirt roads. Yes, switching to S-video will help a lot, and in more than one aspect (better resolution, no comb filter artifacts, less noise, etc.).